Many surgeons have used tissue expanders exclusively to attain the coverage and reconstruction of skin defects. For the reconstrutive surgery, the principal philosophy of tissue expansion is creating and developing the donor tissue, and still leaving the donor site preserved.
At present, numerous reports on both clinical 1), 2) and experimental 3)-5) experiences have been attempted, and now we introduce the rapid tissue expansion using external reservoirs for correction of scars or defects in order to relieve the problems associated with the long periods of expansion. Twenty-six patients received the operations using 30 tissue expanders placed in the scalp, face, neck, anterior chest and extremities. In our experience, good results were observed in most cases and we have concluded that the method was simple and applicable.
The summaries of this reports are as follows.
1. The advantages of external reservoirs are reduced operation time, ease of injection into the reservoir, drainage of blood from around expander and lack of complications associated with the expander, such as inadvertent puncture and entrapped hematoma etc.
2. We could obtained the satisfactory and acceptable results with the rapid tissue expansion, 3 weeks periods at the scalp and face region, 4 weeks at the neck and extremities.
3. The complications induced by this maneuver were 7 minor and 8 major ones in 5 patients, including infections, disruptions and partial marginal necrosis.
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