Jh. Barker et al., VASCULAR DELAY IN SKELETAL-MUSCLE - A MODEL FOR MICROCIRCULATORY STUDIES, Plastic and reconstructive surgery, 100(3), 1997, pp. 665-669
Dynamic myoplasty is a relatively new use for muscle flaps and has led
us to revisit the mechanisms of vascular delay as a means of optimizi
ng blood supply to muscle flaps. Despite the well-documented effective
ness of vascular delay in skin flaps, vascular delay in muscle flaps h
as not been widely reported. Regardless of the many mechanisms postula
ted in the literature as contributors to the delay effect in skin, the
one element common to all these hypotheses is the importance placed o
n changes in the microcirculation. Based on this factor, in the presen
t study we developed and validated an animal model in which delay-indu
ced microvascular changes could be measured in skeletal muscle flaps.
We used the hairless mouse latissimus dorsi muscle flap because its va
scular distribution is similar to that of humans and its thin structur
e will enable us in future studies to directly view and measure its mi
crovasculature using videomicroscopy. In 12 animals, we found that del
ay significantly (p < 0.01) reduced necrosis of the distal part of the
muscle from 57 +/- 9 percent in nondelayed flaps (n = 7) to 22 +/- 3
percent in delayed (n = 5) flaps. In these studies, we also determined
that the hairless mouse latissimus dorsi muscle flap will serve as an
excellent model for defining microvascular changes throughout delay.