New method presents safer choice for head and neck reconstruction

Generally, transferring only a few inches can go a great distance.

Osaka Metropolitan College researchers have developed a promising method for head and neck reconstruction that shifts the location of transferred tissue with blood vessels connected, providing a safer, sooner choice for sufferers with complicated tissue defects, particularly these at excessive danger.

Head and neck reconstruction performs a vital function within the remedy of sufferers with head and neck most cancers. The aim is to protect capabilities important for respiratory, consuming, and talking, whereas sustaining the affected person’s look and high quality of life.

Conventional reconstruction usually makes use of free flaps, which will not be possible for some sufferers, corresponding to those that have had prior radiation remedy or a number of surgical procedures.”

Tsubasa Kojima, medical physician and lecturer at Osaka Metropolitan College’s Graduate College of Medication and lead creator of the examine

A free flap is a bit of tissue that’s absolutely indifferent from a wholesome a part of the physique (donor website) and reattached to new blood vessels on the defect (recipient website).

The analysis crew minimize a brand new path and labored as a substitute with pedicled flaps taken from the again, referred to as pedicled latissimus dorsi (LD) myocutaneous flaps. Not like free flaps, pedicled flaps stay partially connected to the donor website, retaining their pure blood provide as they’re transferred to the recipient website for reconstruction.

Whereas the LD flap has been utilized in varied reconstructive surgical procedures, the crew developed a singular method that positioned the pores and skin portion of the LD flap extra distally, or decrease on the again, than in typical strategies. This design contains the lateral cutaneous department of the ten^th posterior intercostal artery, making certain dependable blood circulate to the flap.

“This setup gives flexibility, permitting the LD flap to cowl in depth defects, together with these in each the mouth and neck concurrently, and even facilitates jaw reconstruction by incorporating rib bone,” Kojima mentioned.

The examine, carried out between 2003 and 2024, demonstrated that the pedicled LD flap was efficiently built-in in all 22 sufferers with complicated head and neck defects.

“Our outcomes counsel that this pedicled LD flap method gives a dependable, quick, and minimally invasive choice for head and neck reconstruction, notably in circumstances the place free flaps will not be appropriate,” Kojima mentioned. “We hope this method will considerably enhance remedy outcomes for sufferers present process head and neck reconstruction.”

Their findings had been revealed in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgical procedure—International Open.