Type 3 Musculocutaneous Flaps

• Type 1 - single vascular pedicle (e.g. tensor fascia latae).
• Type 2 - Dominant vascular pedicle and minor vascular pedicle, one dominant vascular pedicle usually entering close to the origin or insertion of the muscle with additional smaller vascular pedicles entering the muscle belly (e.g. gracilis).
• Type 3 - Two dominant pedicles, each arising from a separate regional artery (e.g. gluteus maximus).
• Type 4 - Segmental vascular pedicles (e.g. Sartorius).
• Type 5 - Single dominant vascular pedicle and secondary segmental pedicles (e.g. latissimus dorsi).
In surgery muscle grafts are significant, and three main muscles (gracilis, latissimus dorsi and rectus abdominis), can solve 99% of soft part defects that can be reconstructed with muscle.
3.3 Musculocutaneous Flaps
Tansini in 1906 was the first to make a musculocutaneous flap, when he reconstructed a breast using skin and the latissimus dorsi muscle lifted as one unit. Owens in 1955 carried out a procedure that repaired defects in the facial region using the sternocleidomastoid muscle. [2] One of the main advantages of musculocutaneous flaps is that they are less prone to bacterial infection than random flaps. The design of musculocutaneous flaps requires specific and anatomical knowledge of the arterial supply to the muscle and the neuromuscular pedicle. “Combined the cantilevered vascular base of the arterial flap with the perfusion characteristics of a random cutaneous flap.”