Different modalities of soft tissue coverage of hand and wrist defects

Abstract

Soft tissue defects of hand and wrist with exposed tendons, joints, nerves and bones represent a challenge to plastic surgeons. Such defects necessitate early flap coverage to protect underlying vital structures, preserve hand functions and to allow for early rehabilitation. Many flaps have been described and used for coverage of various soft tissue defects. Of these flaps, there are reversed flow flaps like reversed radial forearm flap, and reversed perforator forearm flaps. The distant flaps used in the reconstruction of hand and fingers are the groin flap, the abdominal flap, the abdominal pocketing procedure and free vascularised flaps. In our study, we used some standard flaps to cover the defects according to the flap availability and feasibilty.