Tissue expanders in reconstruction of maxillofacial defects

Tissue expansion in its natural ways had fascinated man from prehistoric times itself. But tissue expansion for medical purposes was first tried and reported only in the early half of twentieth century. Presently the principle of tissue expansion is being used in reconstruction of many hard and soft tissue defects of larger dimension, which were previously regarded as great challenge for maxillofacial and plastic surgeons. Making use of the viscoelastic nature of the skin, considerable amount of tissue expansion based tissue engineering is possible in the maxillofacial region. Here we present a case of a facial scar of large dimension with a central oro cutaneous fistula developed as a result of facial artery blow out in a 24 year old female for which esthetic correction was done using the excess tissue obtained from tissue expansion. In this case where other methods of reconstruction such as local flaps, free flaps and normal tissue grafts were assessed to be non viable, tissue expansion was found to be an apt solution for esthetic reconstruction.