Postburn head and neck reconstruction using tissue expanders

Using Facial Tissue Expanders in Repositioning of Linear and Irregular Cheek Scars for the Quest of Superior Aesthetic Results

“…Based on the results achieved by burn scars of the current study, four in five cases (80%) were completely reconstructed and one case (20%) were incompletely resected. This is similar to the results found in the series of Fattah in 2014 [7], 80% of total patients suffering from head and neck burn scars have been reconstructed completely. Also, this is comparable to the results achieved by Hudson [8].…”

“…It is higher than that achieved by Bozkurt et al who had completely reconstructed 71.6% of their patients [11] but lower than the results of the study of Saleh et al, [12] 87.5% 12 and Hafezi et al, [16] which were 90% of cases. In the current study, the results were approximate to the results found in previous studies [7,8,11,12,16] in spite of relatively difficult expansion of the cheek in our populations than the other areas of the head and neck [7,10,12,16] and other body areas [8,11]. Also, larger number of cases in future researches should be considered.…”

“…In the current study, all patients were operated using rectangular expanders. Rectangular expanders were found by Fattah to generate more tissue gain than of round or crescent expanders [7]. This has been supported by Hudson [8] and Motamed [9] with better flap design and coverage chances.…”

“…Based on a previous study [7], rectangular tissue expanders are believed to have more expandability compared to crescent and round ones. Therefore, we used rectangular tissue expanders in all cases with (40 to 200ml.)…”

“…Based on our study data, tissue expanders were inserted in subcutaneous plane just on the SMAS layer of the cheek in all cases and the initial volume of the tissue expanders was between 40 and 200ml. In different studies, the neck was the most common site for expander placement in cheek scar revision [13,15,7] with the largest applicable initial volumes. The mean initial volume by Yamin et al, was 321.55±182.52 [15].…”