La mammoplastie, comme première étape de la chirurgie prothétique du coude traumatique : à propos d'un cas

A 45-year old polytraumatized female patient presented with an ankylosed elbow two years after a traffic accident. A skin graft adherent to the proximal radius was painful and precluded any attempt at total elbow arthroplasty. Local muscular, cutaneous and vascular sequelae contraindicated the usual local regional flaps or made risky elbow coverage with free flaps. The patient's breast hypertrophy, an obstacle to a random-pattern flap on the torso, offered enough tissue to cover the injured elbow with an axial-pattern flap of the left breast lower-outer quadrant. Six months later the patient had a total elbow arthroplasty with pain suppression and improvement of the range of motion.