HK experts develop new graft technique for cancer surgery

HONG KONG, May 23 (Reuters) Doctors in Hong Kong have developed a new technique to reconstruct large wounds left behind by surgery to remove advanced head and neck cancers.

Such procedures are tricky because they often involve the removal of large areas of diseased skin and soft tissues, and surgeons need to first figure out how to cover up these open wounds before they can attempt to extract the tumours.

Doctors from the University of Hong Kong said they found a way to use skin and soft tissues from the area below the armpits, known as the lateral thoracic.

''It's a very long stretch of tissue that we can use to cover an area anywhere from the neck right up to below the eyes,'' said Anthony Yuen, an otorhinolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) professor with the university's surgery department.

Writing in the February issue of the journal Laryngoscope, Yuen and colleague Raymond Ng said they had performed the procedure successfully on 15 out of 16 patients since 2004. The patients had advanced cancers and radiotherapy did not work.

The failed case involved a diabetic who developed an infection and died.

INOPERABLE BEFORE Skin grafting is not an option because surgeries to remove head and neck cancers leave deep wounds that need to be covered by skin and soft tissues with blood vessels intact -- what is called a ''flap'' -- so that it may heal.

Until this new technique came along, some patients with advanced head and neck cancers were considered inoperable and could only wait for death.

''In some of these advanced cancers, the skin and tissues that would have to be removed are so extensive that previous methods could not work,'' Yuen said.

These previous methods include using tissues from the chest, but the replacement tissues were usually too small or the donor area was too vulnerable to infection.

Nose and throat cancer is common among people in southern China, a feature experts link to diets rich in preserved foods, such as salted fish. Throat cancer is rife among the smoking population in China.

There are 2,000 new cases of head and neck cancer each year in Hong Kong and 50 per cent of them are diagnosed when they are already in an advanced stage.

REUTERS LPB VV0920