The muscle flap for management of osteomyelitis.

Reconstructive surgeons now routinely use the muscle flap to cover a multitude of wounds complicated by bacterial infection and inadequate coverage. As early as 1946, Stark1 reported the successful use of a pedicled muscle flap to close the wound of chronic osteomyelitis after sequestrectomy. More recently, muscle flaps have been successfully transposed into infeeted median-sternotomy incisions after debridement of infected bone.2 With microsurgical techniques, muscle has been transplanted to distant sites, such as the cranium and distal tibia, to cover exposed, infected bone.3 4 5 In this issue, May and his associates report on a series of such cases in which they . . .