ABSTRACT
The use of omentum for tissue transfer has come about through a b'rief but significant series of historical developments. Antoine Joseph Jobert de Lamballe, a French surgeon during the Napoleonic era, was the first to describe the use of the omentum to prevent bowel injury through adhesion formation in wounded soldiers on the battlefield (I). Nicholas Senn, an American surgeon at the University of Chicago, described the use of the omentum to protect intestinal suture lines in the late 1880s (1). In 1963, Kiricuta was the first surgeon to describe the use of omentum for coverage of a radionecrotic chest wall defect. Arnold et al. took this a step further by its use with split-thickness skin graft for breast reconstruction (2). Goldsmith has described several uses for transfer to both the central and peripheral nervous system for treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer's and spinal cord injury (3,4). With its popularity, Saltz et al. in the early 1990s used laparoscopic harvest for omental free flap transfer, decreasing the potential morbidity associated with open omental harvest (2).
