Secondary surgery for cicatricial complications of facial injury

To investigate the nature of surgical revision procedures necessitated by cicatricial complications of facial injury.

All patients who had facial trauma in a period of approximately 5 years managed by a single surgeon were reviewed. Of these, 36 were found to have undergone secondary revision procedures arising specifically from scar-related complications.

The average age of patients undergoing revision surgery was 34 years; 27 of the 36 patients (75%) were men, and 9 of the 36 (25%) required multiple revision surgical visits. The most common cause of injury was motor vehicle collision; the interval between the initial trauma and the first revision surgery was most commonly 6 to 12 months. Scar-related complications were categorized on the face by anatomic subsite; they occurred most frequently on the forehead/cheeks/chin area, with the eyes/periorbital area the second most frequent location. One hundred twelve discrete surgical procedures (as per current procedural terminology) were performed on these 36 patients to address the cicatricial sequelae of their initial injuries.

Facial trauma can frequently entail secondary morbidity in the form of facial scar deposition, which itself can necessitate surgical repair. This represents a substantial but as yet underappreciated health care burden attendant to maxillofacial injury.