Two Cases of Palatal Reconstruction Using Temporal Muscle Flap after Maxillary Cancer Resection

Abstract

  The maxilla plays an important role in mastication, swallowing, and articulation, as well as facial morphology, holding the eyeballs and blocking the oral and nasal cavities. Maxillary cancer requires multidisciplinary treatment that combines surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. In the case of surgical treatment, depending on the degree of tissue loss, functional and cosmetic problems may occur, so various types of reconstruction are required. For reconstruction of the palate after total maxillary resection, free tissue transplantation such as involving the rectus abdominis musculocutaneous flap or forearm flap is often utilized. It is necessary to consider the optimal technique. We performed palatal reconstruction for two cases of maxillary cancer using a pedicled temporal muscle flap with pre-existing cardiac and renal dysfunction and low surgical tolerance. Similar reports are rare. In this article, we report our procedure, and favorable results were obtained in terms of function and esthetics.