Vascular communications between donor and recipient tissues after successful full face transplantation.

The vascular reorganization after facial transplantation has important implications on future surgical planning. The purpose of this study was to evaluate blood flow (BF) after full face transplantation using wide area-detector computed tomography (CT) techniques. Three subjects with severe craniofacial injury who underwent full face transplantation were included. All subjects underwent a single anastomosis bilaterally of the artery and vein, and the recipient tongue was preserved. Before and after surgery, dynamic volume CT studies were analyzed for vascular anatomy and blood perfusion. Postsurgical CT showed extensive vascular reorganization for external carotid artery (ECA) angiosome; collateral flows from vertebral, ascending pharyngeal or maxillary arteries supplied the branches from the recipient ECAs distal to the ligation. While allograft tissue was slightly less perfused when the facial artery was the only donor artery when compared to an ECA-ECA anastomosis (4.4 ± 0.4% vs. 5.7 ± 0.7%), allograft perfusion was higher than the recipient normal neck tissue. BF for the recipient tongue was maintained from contralateral/donor arteries when the lingual artery was sacrificed. Venous drainage was adequate for all subjects, even when the recipient internal jugular vein was anastomosed in end-to-end fashion on one side. In conclusion, dynamic CT identified adequate BF for facial allografts via extensive vascular reorganization.

CT angiography for surgical planning in face transplantation candidates.

SUMMARY: Facial allotransplantation replaces missing facial structures with anatomically identical tissues, providing desired functional, esthetic, and psychosocial benefits far superior to those of conventional methods. On the basis of very encouraging initial results, it is likely that more procedures will be performed in the near future. Typical candidates have extremely complex vascular anatomy due to severe injury and/or multiple prior reconstructive attempts; thus, each procedure is uniquely determined by the defects and vascular anatomy of the candidate. We detail CT angiography vascular mapping, noting the clinical relevance of the imaging, the angiosome concept and noninvasive delineation of the key vessels, and current controversies related to the vascular anastomoses.