[Longitudinal gracilis musculocutaneous flaps with a crossing boundary blood supply from the obturator artery].
OBJECTIVE
The traditional gracilis musculocutaneous flap is supplied by a branch of deep femoral artery, which enters the muscle in between the upper and middle third of it. So the flap barely reaches the pelvis and perineum region for reconstruction. By exploring the blood supply pattern we tried to rotate the flap Upon at the higher point starting at the obturator foramen in order to let it cover a bigger area.


METHODS
anatomical reviewing of the blood supply of the gracilis branches of obturator, medial femoral circumflex and deep femoral arteries. Based on this a new type of longitudinal gracilis musculocutaneous flap supported only by the obturator artery was designed to reach the pelvis, female genitalia, pubic symphysis, inguinal area easily.


RESULTS
The new kind of flap has been applied to 9 patients for deformity repairing and tissue replacement in the pelvic and perineal area. All the flaps survived and achieved satisfactory result with 3 months to 3 years' follow up.


CONCLUSIONS
Longitudinal gracilis musculocutaneous flaps supplied by the obturator artery can be used as regular musculocutaneous flap clinically.
Chen
Zong-ji
ZJ
Plastic Surgery Hospital of PUMC, Beijing, China.
Gao
Guo-lan
GL
Ma
Fu-shun
FS
Hu
Ai-min
AM
Chen
Huan-ran
HR
Li
Jian-qin
JQ
D005260:Female; D005263:Femoral Artery / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000637:transplantation*; D013524:Surgical Flaps / Q000098:blood supply