Stair Ascent and Descent in Assessing Donor-Site Morbidity Following Osteocutaneous Free Fibula Transfer: A Preliminary Study

Donor-Site Morbidity After Osteocutaneous Free Fibula Transfer: Longitudinal Analysis of Gait Performance

“…Bodde et al 20 found an increased variability in stride time when the patients were asked to walk faster or when they were submitted to a double task condition. A similar finding was reported by Feuvrier et al 14 and ascribed to a more cautious walking pattern, as also reported by Baj et al 19 for stairs descent. Rendenbach et al 32 observed a significant reduction in lower limb maximum peak power, but did not test gait kinetics The mild velocity increase detected in our analysis, due to the longitudinal structure of the study, may be explained by a major knowledge of the gait trail in the postoperative assessment jointly to the lack of major gait alterations.…”

“…Alongside with clinical evaluations, some studies performed instrumental gait analyses comparing the results with a control group 3,10,14,19,20,21 . These studies did not discriminate potential differences due to patient's habits and systemic illnesses.…”

“…Furthermore, most of the studies which performed a gait analysis after VFFF removal made their post-operative evaluation without following a strict temporal criterion but defining a post-surgical moment when all the patients were analyzed 3,10,12,14,[19][20][21]27 . Despite the advantages in the data collection managing, data are influenced by an evaluation…”

“…Thus, weakness, ankle instability, toe-deformity and difficulties in walking have been described as mixed muscular-nervous consequences of the flap removal 6,12-15 . Although the efficacy of the reconstruction has already been demonstrated in multiple publications 4,5,13 , few investigations described the donor site outcome after the harvest, generally using a qualitative approach based on clinical assessments 3,6,13,[16][17][18] . A quantitative evaluation after VFFF harvest through computerized gait analysis has been performed by few laboratories, often with non-concordant results due to different study protocols, as summarized in Table 1 3,10,12,14,[19][20][21][22] . Most studies collected data only after surgery, with or without the concomitant assessment of a control group.…”

Perioperative pain management after fibular free flap harvesting for head‐and‐neck reconstruction using mini‐catheters to inject local anesthetic: A pilot study

“…The advantages of this flap in terms of reconstruction are well‐known; many papers on this topic have been published over the past 30 years (Aydin, Emekli, Erer, & Hafiz, ; Moubayed et al, ). Papers focusing on harvesting‐associated morbidities are relatively few in number, but nonetheless allow the assessment of long‐term, postoperative donor site outcomes—especially functionality (Baj et al, ; Feuvrier, Sagawa, Béliard, Pauchot, & Decavel, ; Li, Fang, Qi, Luo, & Sun, ; Ver Halen, ).…”