Plasmatic imbibition and revascularization in venousisland flap

ABSTRACT

Several mechanisms about venous flap were proposed. Among them, plasmatic imbibition and early revascularization are supposed to be the most important factors for the survival of venous flap. Many reports about the role of plasmatic imbibition have used silastic sheet or other foreign material to block the plasmatic imbibition so that foreign body reaction might affect the survival of the flap. No experiment has been reported to examine the revascularization directly. We blocked the plasmatic imbibition by marginal resection around the venous island flap and delayed venous island flap and placing it onto the bare cartilage to exclude the effect of foreign body. We also examined the revasularization of the delay and non-delay venous island flap directly using microfil cast. As a result blocking of the plasmatic imbibition markedly decrease the survival of the flap but the survival of delay flap is about five times that of non delay flap. Revascularization was minimal at 1 week postoperative day. It is inferred that plasmatic imbibition is more important than revascularization.