An Unusual Transplant
This patient suffered a traumatic injury to his face. The defect was repaired and covered with a pectoralis major myocutaneous flap. The free flap was taken from the patient’s own chest transplanted onto his face with blood supply surgically reconnected to the blood vessels adjacent to the wound. The question here is why take the flap from such a location? The term free flap is used to describe the "transplantation" of tissue from one site of the body to another, in order to reconstruct an existing defect. Various types of tissue may be transferred as a "free flap" including skin and fat, muscle, nerve, bone, cartilage (or any combination of these). For all "free flaps", the blood supply is reconstituted using microsurgical techniques to reconnect the artery (brings blood into the flap) and vein (allows blood to flow out of the flap).