ABSTRACT
Surgeons are often faced with a plethora of wounds requiring differing forms of repair and reconstruction. This can be even more challenging in the head and neck where obvious deformity can have profound implications on a patient’s quality of life. A comprehensive understanding of wound healing physiology is required to achieve the optimum outcome for the patient. Surgeons attempt to place their incisions using so-called ‘lines of maximum extensibility’. These are areas of skin that are more extensible due to elastic fibres, allowing for reduced tension across the wound in a particular vector. Bone grafting can be achieved from four sources. The bone graft does not ‘survive’ once transplanted. There are three sites: the small concave conchal bowl area, the longer curved area between the helix and antihelix and the tragus itself. The site is infiltrated with local anaesthetic for pain relief and to aid the dissection. The flap is raised in a subperichondral plane and clean cartilage surface exposed.
