Analysis of the morbidity associated with immediate microvascular reconstruction in head and neck cancer patients

Free tissue transfer has become an important adjunct in the reconstruction of head and neck cancer patients. Despite the success, the added time required to perform free flap reconstructions continues to be a concern for some head and neck surgeons. In order to investigate whether this added time increases the risk of medical complications to the patient, 20 consecutive free flap patients were compared to 20 age-, site-, and histology-matched controls. These patients were analyzed for demographic data, American Society of Anesthetic risk scores, stage, tumor site, and pre- and postoperative medical problems. The mean occurrence of medical problems preoperatively was 1.1 occurrences per patient for the flap group and 1.5 occurrences per patient for the control group. Postoperatively, there were 0.75 occurrences per flap group and 0.9 occurrences for the control group. Neither of these was statistically significant. The length of hospitalization was 13.5 days for the control group and 15.9 days for the flap group. Again, this was not statistically significant. The only significant statistic difference was the length of the procedure: 6.95 hours for the control group and 11.0 hours for the flap group, which had a p value of less than 0.001. In conclusion, this study indicates that length of procedure alone should not be a determining factor in deciding whether or not to use immediate microvascular reconstruction in head and neck cancer patients.