SKIN EXPANDER: A RETROSPECTIVE STUDY

The use of skin expander find his first use in 1957 by Neumann. They are used to reconstruct large or complex soft tissue defects in all regions of body. This retrospective study was carry out to asses the clinical outcome a series of 18 cases of skin expanders treated at the Plastic Surgery Unit, Ferrara University, Italy in the period between December 2005 and December 2010. There were 16 (88.9%) females and 2 (11.1%) males, age ranged from 11 to 58 years with a mean value of 32.9 years (standard deviation ± 12 years). They were treated for three principal causes: fracture’s sequelae, tumors and burns.Only two cases had skin dehiscences. Chi square text was used to detect those variables (i.e. T, type of disease, surgeon and site) potentially associated with failures. None of the studied variables was statistically correlated with failures. Tissue expanders allow the surgeon to replace skin defects with new tissue of appropriate color, texture or similar qualities. Since few cases failed in our series, it was demonstrated that skin expanders are reliable devices to augment soft tissues to be used for recovering skin defects