Multidisciplinary Application of an External Tissue Expander Device to Improve Patient Outcomes: A Critical Review.

Continuous external tissue expansion (CETE) is a versatile tool in soft tissue injury management, and could be an addition to the traditional reconstructive ladder. This critical review discusses the principles and application of CETE, covering a company-sponsored consensus meeting on this emerging technology and highlighting the DermaClose (Synovis Micro Companies Alliance, Inc., Birmingham, AL) device's unique approach to soft tissue injury management.

New Technique: Acute Minced Expansion Graft of Traumatic Wound Tissue.

Objectives: Superficial soft tissue injury, such as a skin tear, is common. For such wounds, the authors introduce a novel technique that allows the physician to salvage otherwise discarded tissue as a traumatic graft to highly accelerate wound healing.

Methods: A series of 11 patients with superficial soft tissue trauma in which debrided tissues are salvaged back into the wound by means of minced expansion grafting (MEG) are followed from presentation through healing.

A novel way to treat skin tears.

Skin tears are one of the most commonly treated wounds in the elderly population. In their most basic form, they are essentially traumatic random pattern flaps. We postulate that the injured blood flow to these skin flaps should be ignored and the tissue should be treated as a skin graft.

Nonextremity replantation: the management of amputations of the facial parts and testicle.

Successful nonextremity replantations, particularly of the facial anatomy and testicles, are rare procedures, and only a handful of cases have been reported. This article reviews the current literature in nonextremity replantations and representative cases performed at the authors' institution. Certain underlying themes and problems are consistently encountered in the surgical management of these cases.