Facial skin graft using preauricular and forehead expansion

ABSTRACT

Skin graft has been widely used for facial skin reconstruction. Inguinal area is the common donor site for full-thickness skin graft of various area. Especially for facial skin graft, retroauricular area or upper eyelid skin has been used as a donor site. But these donor sites have some limitations as perfect ones in terms of size, color and texture when applied onto facial area. Even retroauricular skin shows color and texture differences from normal facial skin after it is grafted. Authors performed expansion of the skin of preauricular area or forehead where minimal scars would come out after final operation. We harvested this expanded skin and performed skin graft following excision of nevus, poor scar, or hemangioma in face.We achieved satisfactory results in terms of color and texture by applying this method in 11 clinical cases; 4 cases of hemangioma, 4 nevus, and 3 cases of traumatic scar. Donor site scars were clinically inspicuous in all these 11 cases.