tissue defect

Trauma, oncological treatments or pressure ulcers can result in severe tissue defects.

Soft tissue defects due to trauma or after tumor extirpation are important medical and cosmetic topics.

In 2003, the FDA approved hyaluronan injections for filling soft tissue defects such as facial wrinkles.

Therefore reconstructive surgeons have developed a variety of surgical techniques to conceal the soft tissue defects by using tissue transfers, better known as flaps.

Currently, though, such augmentation of hard tissue defects tends to be done with hard tissue replacements, namely bone graft materials.

Tissue engineered oral mucosa shows promise for clinical use, such as the replacement of soft tissue defects in the oral cavity.

The fact that each tissue defect is different makes it necessary for each tissue defect to be assessed individually.

The surgical removal of both benign and malignant tumors often result in serious tissue defects involving not only soft tissue but also parts of the bone.

Combined, Dr Nick Rhodes describes the discipline as "aiming to repair tissue defects by driving regeneration of healthy tissues using engineered materials and processes."

This usually occurs in the mandible, and causes chronic pain and surface ulceration, sometimes resulting in non healing bone being exposed through a soft tissue defect.

An ulcer is a tissue defect which has penetrated the epithelial-connective tissue border, with its base at a deep level in the submucosa, or even within muscle or periosteum.

If there is extensive destruction a fasciotomy is needed, therefore it is generally accepted that the best way to cover these types of tissue defects is a free flap transplantation.

A Type 1 collagen or other connective tissue defect (found in Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Marfan syndrome) resulting in weakened ligaments/ligamentous laxity, muscles and tendons.

Twenty three years after the first perforator flap was described by Koshima and Soeda, there has been a significant step towards covering tissue defects by using only cutaneous tissue.

Treatment of tissue defects caused after a trauma present major surgical challenges especially those of the upper and lower limb, due to the fact that they often not only cause damage to the skin but also to bones, muscles/tendons, vessels and/or nerves.

A twist to this philosophic discussion on the art of diagnosis is that, in recent times, the possibility of an underlying pathophysiosology has been considered-obesity is associated with gallstones, hiatus hernia, and diverticular disease, and there is the suggestion of an underlying connective tissue defect such as a "herniosis."

Various sets of criteria have been suggested to identify the disorder in an individual patient, all of which include macrocephaly and a number of the following: somatic overgrowth, cutis marmorata, midline facial birthmark, polydactyly/syndactyly, asymmetry (hemihyperplasia or hemihypertrophy), hypotonia at birth, developmental delay, connective tissue defect and frontal bossing.