Anterolateral thigh harvesting for head and neck reconstruction without Doppler: Risky or not?

Anterolateral thigh harvesting for head and neck reconstruction without Doppler: Risky or not?

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Background: Anterolateral thigh flap (ALT) is used as a workhorse flap for head and neck reconstruction.The most used method to map the perforators nowadays is hand-held Doppler although several more sophisticated techniques have been described.This paper is to investigate whether harvesting the ALT flap without preoperative mapping is safe.Materials and methods: Twenty consecutive patients were randomly assigned to one of two groups: A or Lash B.

Patients of A group (n = 10) were marked before the operation with the use of a Doppler probe whilst patients of group B (n = 10) were not marked preoperatively using Stoves Richmond 600DF Dual Fuel Cooker 60cm Double Oven Jalapeno Red 444444724 Doppler to detect the perforators.Complications and time of ALT dissection were documented.Results: There was no statistical difference of complications between the two groups.Mean time of flap harvesting (skin incision up to main pedicle) was approximately 140 min in group A and 165 min in group B (statistically significantly less in group A p = 0.

008).Conclusions: This paper is an indication that harvesting the ALT flap without preoperative mapping, even with hand-held Doppler, does not compromise safety of the procedure although operative time is prolonged.