Objective: To investigate the clinical outcome of the repairing of soft tissue defects of foot with reverse island skin flap nourished by vasa vasorum of the sural nerve.
Methods: The skin flap was designed with sural nerve and its vasa vasorum as the pedicle, and was harvested from the posterior crural region based on the size of the wounds. The defects of the foot in eighteen patients were repaired by reverse transplantation of the skin flap. The state of the skin flaps was observed post-operatively.
Results: All the skin flaps survived. The biggest skin flap was 10.5 cm x 16.5 cm in size. The donor sites healed well with negligible change in appearance and function.
Conclusion: Reverse gastrocnemius musculocutaneous flap nourished by sural nerve vasa vasorum was easily procured with high survival rate, and it could be an ideal flap for the repair of soft tissue defect of the foot.