Following its introduction as island flap by Dunham in 1893 for the reconstruction of a cheek defect with a flap based on the anterior temporal vessels has been popularized in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery. And investigators are continually searching for new donor area for use of it.
In clinical application of the island flap, a given flap must be met certain criteria in order to given widespread acceptance. Among these are applicability in a wide range of situations, presence of indentifiable blood vessels, easy dissection, and minimal donor-site morbidity.
Island pedicle flap is a very useful method of treatment for such situations in which cannot to be using a local flap because of scar tissues or irradiated tissues around the wound, and in which inapplicable to be using a free because of inadequacy of the recipient vessels.
It has many distinctive advantages over the conventional local flaps.
They are as follows;
1. It has good blood supply and less risk of infection, so it is be one of the safest.
2. It provides well vascularized flap with a one-stage operation.
3. It has no necessity of delay, and far fewer limitations of flap-size.
4. It improves the comfort of the patients, and allows early ambulation.
And compare to free flap, advantages of the island flap are the technical ease of the transferring it, the simplest method with a single operation, short hospitalization, and lower cost.
During the past 5 years (from Feb., 1982 to July, 1986) authors experienced 18 cases of island pedicle flaps.
In this paper, we would like to report our cases with brief of the related references.
|