In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in the use of large national databases in plastic surgery research. This pattern may be associated with the transition of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 to pass/fail scoring, which has placed greater emphasis on research productivity during medical school. The availability of easily accessible, high-powered, de-identified data may offer valuable research opportunities for medical students, particularly those without home plastic surgery programs. However, this trend also warrants caution, as the growing volume of database-driven studies raises concerns about overall research quality and the potential for redundancy or overlap in the literature. The study aimed to identify and quantify trends in database-driven research within plastic surgery, evaluate medical student authorship patterns, and characterize the overall landscape of these studies.