[Use of nasolabial flap for mouth floor reconstruction]

Oral cavity cancers represent 30% of the cephalic extremity tumors. Their resection requires in the majority of the cases a reconstruction by soft tissue. The reconstruction must be simple by bringing some reliable, hairless, thin, resistant tissue to radiation therapy, with a limited morbidity and an acceptable scar ransom.

The purpose of our study is to define the place and the limits of nasolabial flap in the reconstruction of the anterior floor of the mouth after tumoral resection compared to the other surgical and microsurgical techniques.

We retrospectively studied patients with oral cancerous lesions of the anterior floor of the mouth reconstructed by nasolabial flap between 1997 and 2002. The patients benefited from a surgical resection of the tumor by respecting the safety margins, with an immediate reconstruction allowing the restoring of the oral functions. We tried to describe the limits of this flap and discussed its modalities of vascularization.

Fifty-three flap procedures were performed on 47 patients; forty-one have received a unilateral and 6 a bilateral nasolabial flap. The majority of tumors were squamous cell carcinomas (50 cases). The average age of patients were 64.8 years (45-78 years) with 40 men (75%) and 13 women (25%). A radical neck lymph nodes dissection with facial artery ligation was realized for 21 patients (15 ipsilateral and 3 bilateral) without affecting the outcome. As complications, we noted one complete necrosis and two partial necrosis of the flap, two postoperative wound complications with dehiscence as well as a massive local recurrence of initial tumor in one patient.

The nasolabial flap represents a simple functional and morphological option to other pedicled or microsurgically anastomosed flaps for the reconstruction of intermediate-sized mouth floor defects.