Novel Surgical Approach to Acalvaria

Abstract

Acalvaria, also known as acrania, is a rare congenital anomaly which is characterized by a complete or partial defect of the calvarium. Due to the low number of patients reported, there is no a standard for the treatment of this condition; thereby, the objective is to present a new surviving patient with acalvaria and a novel surgical approach to treat it, giving craniofacial surgeons and neurosurgeons more tools to face it. In this article, the authors present a reproducible surgical approach in patients with partial acalvaria, which consist in use the present bone as a graft to cover the defect, giving a temporal but stable coverture. No other calvaria graft has been published along the available literature, since only around 4 patients are acalvaria survivors worldwide. However, the authors need to make a longer follow-up to establish the usefulness of the technique in long term. Other limitation is the future procedures needed to a better function and aesthetic.

Acalvaria and imperforate anus: an extremely rare association

“…Similar cases of isolated cutis verticis aplasia, spontaneous tissue growth have been registered. Partial surgical intervention has been attempted with good results in acalvaria (Caycedo et al , 2021). Acalvaria differs from the clinical entity known as aplasia cutis congenita (ACC) because ACC is a rare congenital skin defect characterized by the absence of the epidermis, dermis and underlying tissue (Brackenrich et al , 2021), whereas acalvaria is characterized by the absence of the flat bones of the skull (Harris et al , 1993).…”