Design and application of the expanded transposition flaps in the treatment of cheek skin defects / 中华整形外科杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To introduce the design and application of the expanded transposition skin flap in the treatment of cheek skin defects.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The expanded transposition flaps were divided into three types: the regular expanded transposition flap (ERT flap), the expanded transposition-advancement-transposition flap (TAT flap) and the expanded rotation-advancement-transposition flap (RAT flap). 135 cases of cheek skin defects resulted from hemangioma, scar and naevi were treated with these three types of flaps. Delay surgery was needed when the ratio of length to width was bigger than 2 : 1.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>There were 139 expanded transposition flaps, including 17 ERT flaps, 69 TAT flaps, 53 RAT flaps. Blood supply disturbance was happened at the end of the flaps in 6 cases, including 2 ERT flaps and 4 other flaps. Other flaps had no complication. The results were satisfactory.</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>The expanded transposition skin flap is a reliable method to repair the cheek skin defect. The preoperative flap design is very important for successful reconstruction.</p>

The design and transposition principles of expanded flap for treatment of cheek skin-soft tissue defect / 中华整形外科杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To explore an ideal method for repairing the skin-soft tissue defects according to the different anatomical units of cheek, and find reasonable design principles to transfer the expanded flaps.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>According to the location of the defect, we placed 1-3 appropriate expanders nearby, when the flap expanded enough we adopted advanced skin flaps, rotation-advanced skin flaps or transposition skin flaps to repair the defect. In this group of 269 cases, the defects were secondary to hemangioma, various scars, nevus or nevus excision.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>In all 269 cheek defects, 305 expanded flaps were developed which included 145 rotation-advanced flaps, 121 advanced skin flaps and 39 transposition skin flaps. 52 of them generated complications, including blood circulation disorder of the distal part of flaps, hematoma, infection, injection, lower eyelid ectropion, expander extrusion and capsule contracture. Mostly, these complications didn't affect the final results.</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>The principles presented in this article are the guidelines to treat the skin-soft tissue defect of check with tissue expansion. The satisfied results come from the reasonable flap designs.</p>