Novel Surgical Approach to Acalvaria

Acalvaria, also known as acrania, is a rare congenital anomaly which is characterized by a complete or partial defect of the calvarium. Due to the low number of patients reported, there is no a standard for the treatment of this condition; thereby, the objective is to present a new surviving patient with acalvaria and a novel surgical approach to treat it, giving craniofacial surgeons and neurosurgeons more tools to face it. In this article, the authors present a reproducible surgical approach in patients with partial acalvaria, which consist in use the present bone as a graft to cover the defect, giving a temporal but stable coverture. No other calvaria graft has been published along the available literature, since only around 4 patients are acalvaria survivors worldwide. However, the authors need to make a longer follow-up to establish the usefulness of the technique in long term. Other limitation is the future procedures needed to a better function and aesthetic.