• Arch Orthop Trauma Surg · Feb 2010

    Free serratus anterior fascia flap for reconstruction of hand and finger defects.

    • Dietmar Ulrich, Paul Fuchs, Ahmed Bozkurt, and Norbert Pallua.
    • Burn Unit, Department of Plastic Surgery, Hand Surgery, Medical Faculty of the University of Technology, University Hospital, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074, Aachen, Germany. dulrich@ukaachen.de
    • Arch Orthop Trauma Surg. 2010 Feb 1; 130 (2): 217222217-22.

    IntroductionReconstruction of the dorsal surface of hand defects requires thin, pliable, well vascularized tissue with a gliding surface for the extensor tendon course. Also defects of the palmar hand and degloved fingers need non-bulky soft tissue for reconstruction. We present a retrospective analysis of nine patients with free serratus anterior fascia flaps used to cover defects of the palmar and dorsal hand and of degloved fingers.MethodsThree of the patients presented limited range of hand motion due to full-thickness burns; one patient had defects of the dorsum of one hand after acute burn injury. Two patients had an acute trauma of the dorsum of the hand with extensor tendon injury, another patient a soft-tissue defect of his thumb and dorsal hand due to an avulsion injury. One patient presented dorsal defect of three fingers after degloving injury. One patient had a palmar defect after industrial crush injury with exposed tendons, vessels, and nerves. The flaps were applied as pure fascial flaps with an immediate partial-thickness skin graft.ResultsOne patient presented a partial necrosis of <10% flap size. All other flaps survived completely. Two of the patients presented wound healing problems of the skin graft that healed secondarily. All patients recovered useful hand function without a bulky contour of their hand or fingers. Except for the scar, no donor-site morbidity was reported.ConclusionThe free serratus anterior fascia flap has good functional and cosmetic properties and there is low donor-site morbidity. It is an excellent flap for soft-tissue reconstruction combined with extensor tendon reconstruction on the dorsum of the hand. The flap is also very useful for palmar and finger defects.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…