Lingual mucosal graft substitution urethroplasty for anterior urethral strictures: our technique of graft harvesting.
OBJECTIVE
To describe our technique of lingual mucosal graft harvesting for substitution urethroplasty and the complications encountered at the donor site.


METHODS
Twenty-eight patients who underwent lingual mucosal graft urethroplasty between May 2006 and March 2007 were included in this study.


METHODS
The site of the graft harvest is the lateral mucosal lining of the tongue. Graft harvesting is started from the posterior landmark of the graft on the left side of the tongue. It is continued across the tip of the tongue to the other side if lengthier graft is required. The graft harvesting site is simultaneously closed with continuous running suture using 4-0 polyglactin suture to achieve immediate and good homeostasis.


RESULTS
Mean duration of follow up was 4.2 months. Average length of harvested graft was 6.5 cm. Mean harvesting time was 18 min. At the first postoperative day, 92% patients experienced pain at donor site and 24% had slurring of speech. By third postoperative day, >70% were free of pain and four had slurring of speech. By sixth postoperative day, none of the patient suffered pain. All the patients were able to resume oral fluid within 24 h, eat soft solid diet in 48-72 h and return to normal diet after 4-5 days of surgery. No patient suffered from difficulty in opening the mouth, salivation disturbances, peri-oral numbness or difficulty in protrusion of tongue.


CONCLUSIONS
Lingual mucosal graft harvesting is a simple procedure, provides lengthy graft and is associated with minimal donor site complications.
Kumar
Abhay
A
Department of Urology, Institute of Medical Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221005, India. gk_abhay@yahoo.co.in
Das
Suren K
SK
Sharma
Girish K
GK
Pandey
Ashwani K
AK
Trivedi
Sameer
S
Dwivedi
Udai S
US
Singh
Pratap B
PB
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002610:Cheek; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009061:Mouth Mucosa / Q000637:transplantation*; D019651:Plastic Surgery Procedures / Q000379:methods*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D020858:Tissue and Organ Harvesting / Q000379:methods*; D014059:Tongue; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014525:Urethral Stricture / Q000601:surgery*; D013520:Urologic Surgical Procedures / Q000379:methods*; D055815:Young Adult