Treatment of Syndactyly Using Small Subcutaneous Pedicled Flap

ABSTRACT

Syndactyly and polysyndactyly are one of the most common congenital anomalies of upper limb. Although there are many surgical approaches, most of them require skin graft for covering the raw surfaces. Therefore these methods involve many disadvantages such as grafted skin contracture, web recurrence, skin graft loss and long operation time, and the grafted hyperpigmented skin and donor site of skin graft, which lead to poor results aesthetically. The authors treated seven cases with a Hayashi's new method in four patients. In this method, tissue of interdigital space are regarded as forming 4 facets of a two piled cube. A dorsal rectangular flap on dorsum of interdigital web makes a new interdigital space. One side of divided digit is coverd with lateral based plantar flap and the other side of divided digit is covered with subcutaneous pedicled flap and remnant web skin. The authors could obtain natural deep interdigital space without web recurrence and scar contracture in 7 cases. Moreover this method does not require skin grafting, accordingly produces better aesthetic results without hyperpigmentation and donor site scaring. Therefore we report this operation technique, which might be used as one of the standard in surgical correction of syndactyly and polysyndactyly.