Combined tissue expansion: clinical attempt to decrease pain and shorten placement time

Tissue expansion can be characterized as a unique reconstructive procedure that takes advantage of the intrinsic ability of tissues to stretch and, in some instances, to grow in response to expansive forces. The efficacy of combined intraoperative expansion to obtain sufficient expanded tissue more rapidly was tested in reconstructions of the extremities, and the comparison between conventional and combined expansion was performed observing five parameters: initial injected volume, pain score, duration of pain, total period of expansion, and histologic findings. We treated 22 patients with conventional expansion and 29 with combined expansions. The latter approach enabled us to overexpand the expanders initially and was associated with lower pain scores than conventional expansion. Furthermore, in the combined expansion group, shortening of the duration of pain was statistically significant in the upper arm (p < 0.05) as well as in the lower leg (p < 0.01). In this group, the total expansion period also was significantly shorter (p < 0.01). Histologically, only minor differences were seen between groups. In this study, intraoperative expansion combined with subsequent rapid overinflated expansion proved to be superior to conventional expansion not only in reducing expansion time but also in decreasing pain. We consider the following effects to contribute to this result: (1) increased skin elasticity due to repeated intraoperative load cycling, which leads to easier expansion of the skin and less irritation of the sensory nerves, (2) improved survival and vascularization of skin flaps due to the "delayed-flap" phenomenon, and (3) prevention of shrinkage of the expanded skin and widening of scars due to overinflated expansion.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)