Abstract
Organ-preserving chemoradiotherapy (CRT) for head and neck cancer is widely practiced, and as a result, salvage surgery for patients with recurrent tumor after chemoradiotherapy has attracted much attention recently. Salvage surgery following chemoradiotherapy is technically difficult as the tissues become firm and fibromatic, and so surgical complications are a serious concern. Therefore, the design of surgical incisions is important to avoid surgical complications.
Our approach to surgical incisions for salvage surgery is as follows: to stretch the skin of the chest superiorly and use it to close wounds, to make the line of skin incision lie on the tissue to be transferred, and not to avoid a 3-point incision if the skin flap has sufficient blood flow.
