[Free tissue transfer].

The free flap transfer has his place in situations were regional flaps--especially pedicled muscle flaps--are not available. This is especially true for the medial and distal third of the lower limb. Another important indication is in infected situations, where we can put the muscle, for example from the free myocutaneous flaps in the infected bone area. At the sole of the foot and the heel we see a special indication, because we can restore by the free tissue transfer sensibility. This means in our opinion a good precaution for reulceration. By the use of a two-team approach the primary long operation time could be cut down up to two to four hours. By simplifying the whole procedure we also could achieve a high success rate of 93.5% in 345 cases which we operated since 1974. In the last two years we did not have any necroses in 94 cases. Therefore we think that nowadays the indication for free flap transfer in the soft tissue reconstruction at the lower extremity and the foot has to be widened.