[Repairing of soft tissue defects with reverse island skin flap nourished by sural nerve vasa vasorum].
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the clinical outcome of the repairing of soft tissue defects of foot with reverse island skin flap nourished by vasa vasorum of the sural nerve.


METHODS
The skin flap was designed with sural nerve and its vasa vasorum as the pedicle, and was harvested from the posterior crural region based on the size of the wounds. The defects of the foot in eighteen patients were repaired by reverse transplantation of the skin flap. The state of the skin flaps was observed post-operatively.


RESULTS
All the skin flaps survived. The biggest skin flap was 10.5 cm x 16.5 cm in size. The donor sites healed well with negligible change in appearance and function.


CONCLUSIONS
Reverse gastrocnemius musculocutaneous flap nourished by sural nerve vasa vasorum was easily procured with high survival rate, and it could be an ideal flap for the repair of soft tissue defect of the foot.
Zhou
Xin-hua
XH
Department of Orthopedics, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical School, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030 P.R. China.
Ruan
Hong-bo
HB
Liang
Qun
Q
Chen
Gang
G
Chen
An-min
AM
Li
Guo-hui
GH
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D018409:Foot Injuries / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019651:Plastic Surgery Procedures / Q000379:methods; D016038:Skin Transplantation / Q000379:methods*; D017695:Soft Tissue Injuries / Q000601:surgery*; D013497:Sural Nerve; D013524:Surgical Flaps / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000294:innervation*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014945:Wound Healing; D055815:Young Adult