Reconstruction of facial defect with submental island flap / 中华医学美学美容杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the effect of the submental island flap in reconstruction of facial defects. Methods Six patients (4 men and 2 women) with lesions in maxillofacial regions were registried in our clinical database. Patients age ranged from 44 to 78 years, lesions were distributed in left face (2 cases), left parotid area (1 case), right parotid area (1 case), and right face (2 cases). The pathologic diagnoses were dermoid cyst with local skin necrosis (1 case ), sebaceous cyst with inflammation and necrosis (1 case), canceration of epithelial tumor (1 case) and squamous cell carcinoma (3 cases). The benign tumors were resected and malignant tumors were extensively resected with neck dissection. The defects (minimum 4.0 cm?3.0 cm, maximum 6.0 cm?6.0 cm ) after surgical resection were reconstructed with the submental island flap. The flap area ranged from 4.5 cm? 3.0 cm to 6.0 cm?4.5 cm. The flap pedicle included submental artery (3 cases) and both submental artey and facial artery ( 3 cases ). The length from end of flaps to origin of pedicle was 6 cm in 3 cases,9 cm in 2 cases and 11 cm in 1 case. Results The flaps survived in all six cases, no obvious difference in colour was found between the flaps and facial skin; no infection at recipient site, unhealed and necrosis occurred. The wounds of donor sites were primarily healed, and the scar of donor site was out of sight when looked with eyesight parallel to the ground. Conclusion It is an ideal method to reconstruct facial defects with submental island flap.