Indocyanine green fluorescence angiography for free flap monitoring: A pilot study.

Objective: We evaluated the feasibility and the tolerance of repeated fluorescent indocyanine green angiography in free flap monitoring, and determined the intraoperative predictive values of flap vitality.

Background: The free flap failure rate has been significantly reduced, but free flap loss still occurs and remains a costly disaster. Repeated clinical examinations are commonly used for flap monitoring, but they can be unreliable because of their subjectivity.

Toward noninvasive assessment of flap viability with time-resolved diffuse optical tomography: a preclinical test on rats.

The noninvasive assessment of flap viability in autologous reconstruction surgery is still an unmet clinical need. To cope with this problem, we developed a proof-of-principle fully automatized setup for fast time-gated diffuse optical tomography exploiting Mellin-Laplace transform to obtain three-dimensional tomographic reconstructions of oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin concentrations. We applied this method to perform preclinical tests on rats inducing total venous occlusion in the cutaneous abdominal flaps.

[Tolerance and efficacy of lipomodelling as an element of breast symmetry in breast reconstruction].

Aim Of The Study: Fat transfer significantly improved results in breast reconstruction. Final breast symmetry is very important in breast reconstruction, but sometimes, the result is not perfect with usual techniques. The aim of this study is to evaluate the tolerance and efficacy of lipomodelling as a complementary technique for breast symmetrisation.

[Use of a free antero-lateral thigh flap for two-stage reconstruction of a large thoracic defect].

In case of extremely large thoracic full-thickness defects where no pedicled flap is available, very large free flaps are sometimes the only options. Dealing with such full-thickness defects where failure of the flap could be lethal, Servant and al described the concept of "two stage free flap" using Latissimus Dorsi muscular or myocutaneous flap. We present a reconstruction of a wide right posterior trunk radionecrosis with exposure of an underlying infected prosthesis using this two-stage free flap strategy with a fasciocutaneous antero-lateral thigh flap.

Perforator-based chimaeric thoracodorsal flap for foot reconstruction.

The reconstruction of severe defects of the ankle and foot is a challenge. The ideal solution should combine a thin skin flap on the dorsum to allow shoe fitting and a muscle flap with a split-thickness skin graft on the weight-bearing area. Perforator-based thoracodorsal chimaeric flaps allow us to achieve these two goals with minimal donor-site morbidity.