The success of these techniques offers the potential to re-establish

flow to large segmental losses to axial arteries, offer safe and definitive flap coverage to traumatic wounds, improve the array of flap options in this setting, and minimize donor site morbidity. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microsurgery, 2012. “
“The deep inferior epigastric artery perforator (DIEP) flap has been a valuable tool in breast reconstruction, but seldom in extremity reconstruction. The aim of this report is to present our experience on the use of the DIEP flap for reconstruction of soft-tissue defects in the extremities of pediatric patients. From January 2007 to February 2011, 22 consecutive free DIEP flap transfers were performed

for reconstruction of complex soft-tissue defects in the extremities of children with a mean age of 5.7 years old (ranging 2–10 years old). Alvelestat mouse The flap design included transverse, oblique, and irregular DIEP flaps, containing one to three perforators in the flap. The flap size ranged from 7 × 4 cm to 18 × 17 cm. Primary donor-site closure was accomplished in all of patients. The postoperative course was uneventfully in most of cases. The venous Selleck ICG-001 congestion was observed in two cases. One case of venous congestion was caused by flap inset with tension. The other case with venous thrombosis ended with partial loss of the flap after salvage procedure. There was one total flap loss due to the arterial thrombosis. The flap survival rate was 95.5%. The mean follow-up was 12 months (ranging 6–36 months). All reconstructed extremities had satisfactory aesthetic and functional outcomes except two cases undergoing the secondary debulking many procedures. The donor sites healed well in all cases without complications. Our experience showed that the free DIEP flap could be an alternative for reconstruction of soft-tissue defects in the extremities of children. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microsurgery 33:612–619, 2013. “
“Advantages of virtual-reality

simulators surgical skill assessment and training include more training time, no risk to patient, repeatable difficulty level, reliable feedback, without the resource demands, and ethical issues of animal-based training. We tested this for a key subtask and showed a strong link between skill in the simulator and in reality. Suturing performance was assessed for four groups of participants, including experienced surgeons and naive subjects, on a custom-made virtual-reality simulator. Each subject tried the experiment 30 times using five different types of needles to perform a standardized suture placement task. Traditional metrics of performance as well as new metrics enabled by our system were proposed, and the data indicate difference between trained and untrained performance.