Reconstruction of the Tibia with a Bipedicle Fibular Flap

Abstract

Tibial defects can be caused by trauma, congenital, osteomyelitis, or cancers. The tibia is the main bone for bearing the body. It is a big bone, and the difficulty of the reconstruction of tibia is importance to repair it. The fibular bone is a good provider for repairing the tibia defects. Generally, the repair was planned be a free vascularized flap. The most important disadvantage is the low calibration. In early age in particular, the original thickness of the tibia is reached after the surgery with a good follow-up process and rehabilitation. In this case; a 22-year-old female patient had a multi-part post-traumatic fracture of the left tibia and was administered to our plastic surgery inpatient clinic. The bone defect was reconstructed with a bipedicle fibular flap taken from the same leg. The fibula was embedded into the medulla with a screw plate, and fixation was applied with an external fixator. Wherefore the loss of skin, skin flap of fibula bottomed of perforators was not used. A vascularized anterolateral thigh flap, which was obtained from the other leg, was used to reconstruct the skin defect. One year after surgery, the bone viability was perfect. The integrity of the skeleton was created without shortening the leg. The rehabilitation of the patient was continued for repowering and resizing the fibula up to tibia. In this case report, we wanted to share our experience for repairing the tibia defect with using a bipedicle fibular flap.

Keywords

• Tibia defect
• fibula