[Reconstructive surgical techniques after palliative tumor excision]

Palliative care is more and more of concern in medical information. If there is no exact definition about the real place of surgery in this concept, the rule of reconstructive surgery is even less clear. The goal of this paper is to try to define, on one hand the general characteristics of palliative surgery, and on the other hand, to underline the role of reconstructive surgery in four specific indications: the head and neck area, the thorax, the pelvis and the extremities. The resection surgery, associated with flap coverage, may seems an excessive treatment in such palliative indications. Nevertheless, the results presented here tend to demonstrate that, after careful patient selection a better quality of life could be obtained with an acceptable surgery-induced morbidity (regarding preoperative disability). More than technical aspect, it is by a different approach of the problem that this type of surgery is to be distinguished.