Is monitor flap monitoring?

Current Evidence for Postoperative Monitoring of Microvascular Free Flaps

“…However, any derivation must be carefully interpreted caused by the potential risk of a false-positive or -negative result arising from vascular complications specific to the "monitoring flap." 62 Clinical monitoring provides a standard against which adjunctive and alternative monitoring techniques must be compared. To date, only a few techniques have been shown to improve flap salvage rates in comparison to clinical monitoring, and all of these case series have based their analysis on small numbers of failing flaps.…”

“…54 One of the significant limitations of the standard clinical monitoring techniques is the inability to examine flaps that are buried or located in difficult to access areas. In the literature, investigators have bypassed this issue by creating a distal skin paddle, 56-59 a chimeric flap, [60][61][62] or an exteriorized flap, [63][64][65][66] on which the usual clinical examinations can be performed. Such "monitoring flaps" provide an indirect indication about the perfusion status of the flap of interest.…”

Externalized double monitoring skin paddles for buried anterolateral thigh flap in pharyngoesophageal reconstruction

“…The imaging techniques, including magnetic resonance imaging, near-infrared spectroscopy, laser Doppler flowmetry, surface thermometry, and continuous tissue oxygenation tension measurement, are expensive or require special equipment. By contrast, the operative techniques, which entail externalizing a component of the flap for monitoring, have the advantages of design simplicity and the ability to allow continuous monitoring (Lin et al, 2014;Tan et al, 2012).…”

“…Externalized double monitoring skin paddles for buried anterolateral thigh flap in pharyngoesophageal reconstruction Dear Editor, Successful free-flap reconstruction is enhanced by frequent monitoring, rapid detection, and salvage of failing flaps (Lin, Chen, Chen, & Tzeng, 2014). However, it is difficult to monitor the buried flaps, leading to a threefold increase in flap loss compared with nonburied flaps (Kim & Kim, 2013).…”