Reliability of island flaps raised after superficial and deep burn injury

In select cases, to prevent any functional loss and to initiate early funct ion during the early burn period, the reconstructive procedure of choice ma y be flap coverage. In these circumstances, when the ideal flap donor site is burned, the clinician may be hesitant to raise this flap because of ques tionable flap survival, The authors conducted this study to determine wheth er a superficially or deeply burned skin island flap would survive when ele vated during the early postburn period. If these flaps are usable, they cou ld expand the options available far burn wound coverage, They used a rat ep igastric island flap model, and divided 50 study animals into two groups, I n group 1 (N = 25), the right epigastric flap site was burned superficially and the left side was left uninjured, Island flaps were raised on both sid es 4 days after the burn injury, The flaps were then sutured back into thei r original sites, and were evaluated 5 days after the surgery. In group 2 ( N = 25), the right epigastric flap site was burned deeply and the left side was left uninjured, Island flaps were raised 4 days after the burn injury on both sides, as in group 1, The flaps were then sutured back into place a nd were evaluated 5 days after the surgery, All of the control flaps on the rats' left sides survived in both groups. In addition, all the superficial ly burned flaps survived in group 1 (100%), and 21 of the deeply burned fla ps survived in group 2 (84%). There was no significant difference between s uperficially and deeply burned flaps with regard to survival, and the burne d flaps were as successful as the unburned control flaps in both groups (p = 0.11). Skin island flaps elevated after superficial or deep burn injury a re reliable in this animal model.