Skin recycling following neovascularization using the rat musculocutaneous flap model.

The recycling of a skin territory as part of a musculocutaneous flap despite prior division of existing musculocutaneous perforators or vice versa within an axial cutaneous flap using skin from a previous musculocutaneous flap may sometimes be done safely if an adequate time period has been allotted to permit sufficient neovascularization from adjacent tissues. In order to test this clinically observed phenomenon, a musculocutaneous flap model based on perforators from the rat rectus abdominis muscle was developed and observed to have complete reliability. Groups of five Sprague-Dawley rats each were sequentially utilized to prove that by a single week following creation of a rectus abdominis musculocutaneous flap adequate peripheral neovascularization would evolve to permit total viability of secondary axial epigastric cutaneous flaps incorporating the same skin that initially was the cutaneous portion of the muscle flap. The converse was also confirmed possible, again using sequential groups of five rats each, in that by 2 weeks the skin of an initial abdominal cutaneous flap could instead be safely transposed and nourished as part of a rectus abdominis musculocutaneous flap. The proposition concerning the reliable reuse of identical skin territories as part of disparate metachronous flap configurations appears to be valid.