Pediatric Microsurgery: A Global Overview

As microsurgical expertise has improved, allowing for the safe transfer of smaller and more refined flaps, free tissue transfer has continued to gain popularity for the management of pediatric soft tissue and bony defects. For the past 2 decades pediatric microsurgery has been shown to be technically feasible and reliable. The major advantage of free tissue transfer in children is the ability to reconstruct defects in a single stage, avoiding the historic treatments of skin grafting, tissue expansion, and pedicled flaps. This article reviews the present state-of-the-art in pediatric microsurgery.