Annali italiani di chirurgia
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Coverage of soft tissue defects in the lower leg is often made by use of free flap, also because of the improving of anaesthesiology techniques in the last decades. However, there are disadvantages in the use of free flaps like the need for a remote donor site, increased operative time, use of a major vessel to the leg, and microsurgical skills. Besides these, trauma in the lower limb are often cause of damage for a major vessels of the leg, so the use of free flaps in these patients may be related to an higher incidence of complications; also associated pathologies, like diabetes and vascular pathology, can increase the incidence of complications when a free flap is utilized. In all these cases local fascio-cutaneous flaps, like the sural reverse flap, because of their easy and short time harvesting, can be a very good alternative to free flaps. Superficial sural artery flap is a adipofasciocutaneous flap based on the vascular axis of the sural nerve, which gets reverse blood flow through communication with the perforating branch of the peroneal artery, situated in the region of lateral malleolar gutter. ⋯ In our cases we found the sural reverse flap to have a good reliability with low incidence of complication and surgical outcomes. This flap is an excellent option for covering defects of minor deficiency of skin in the third distally of lower limb, ankle and heel. It allows rapid, reliable coverage of defects extending as far distally as the forefoot. Because of the sparing of major vessels, the short surgery time in harvesting the flap, and the good vascular pattern of the flap, we retain the flap a first choose technique for reconstruction in lower leg, especially in politrauma and in patients with associated pathology as vascular diseases or diabetes.