SENSIBILITY OF FINGER FILLET FLAPS ON LATE FOLLOW-UP EVALUATION

Though the use of fillet flaps salvaged from damaged digits is a well- established technique to obtain soft tissue coverage for the badly inj ured hand, the sensibility of these flaps has not been evaluated. We e xamined a series of four patients who underwent digital fillet flaps f ollowing hand trauma. Static two-point discrimination measurements of the injured hand and the contralateral hand showed that all four patie nts retained sensibility in the fillet flap that was equal to or bette r than the intact skin surrounding the flap. In some cases, the sensib ility of the flap was equal to the sensibility in the corresponding co ntralateral fingertips. No patients had complaints regarding the funct ion of their fillet flaps as sensate coverage of major soft tissue def ects.