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Full-thickness skin regeneration beneath the exposed titanium mesh in cranioplasty: Two cases report
Daohong Kan1, Xuefeng He2, Bing Liu1
1Department of Burn and Plastic Surgery, The Second People's Hospital of Yibin (The Yibin Hospital of West China Hospital, Sichuan University), Sichuan, China.
Rationale:
Titanium mesh is one of the most widely used implant materials applied in cranioplasty; however, it has been reported to encounter the risk of progressive scalp thinning and implant exposure over time. Here we present 2 cases of exposed titanium mesh (TM) and unusual phenomena of full-thickness skin regeneration beneath the mesh.
Patient Concerns:
Two patients, 1 with an 8-year and 1 with a 2-year history of implant exposure after cranial TM implantation.
Diagnoses:
The patients were diagnosed with scalp ulcers and cranial TM exposure.
Intervention:
The exposed part of the implant was removed, and the full-thickness skin beneath the mesh was directly used as functional soft tissue coverage to repair the scalp defect.
Outcomes:
Full recovery for both patients with cosmetic satisfaction.
Lessons:
Though the exact mechanism of this epithelisation phenomenon beneath the TM remains to be elucidated, it provided a feasible choice for clinicians to reconstruct the scalp's integrity without exerting complicated procedures when dealing with similar cases.
