[Treatment of recurrent Dupuytren's disease by scalar incision and firebreak graft]. / Traitement des récidives de la maladie de Dupuytren par incision scalaire et greffe "coupe-feu".

ABSTRACT

We report our experience of the use of a scalar type incision associated with a total skin graft in the treatment of recurrences of Dupuytren's contracture. This is not an original technique, but one described by Hueston in 1984, which consists of a "Fire Break" skin graft after a simple transverse incision of recurrent Dupuytren's contracture. We attribute the absence of recurrence with this graft to the impossibility of the disease to affect the thin tissue between the skin graft and the underlying tendons. Our series is composed of 25 patients, all male. The majority of these patients had undergone surgery on a single occasion before treatment of recurrences with an average time interval of seven years. In a great majority of cases the little finger was deformed and generally severely (stage III or IV). All of our patients were reviewed with a mean follow-up of 28 months after surgery, and we did not observe any recurrences under the graft. In this series, which remains too small and too recent, 67% of cases presented an acceptable result with nearly complete extension and satisfactory grasp. We do not apply this technique to the treatment of all cases of recurrent Dupuytren's contracture, but we reserve it preferentially for elderly patients, operated on several occasions for ulnar fingers especially the little finger, in digital or digito-palmar forms in which the deformity predominates on the proximal interphalangeal joint with marked digital infiltration.