“…Chronic venous insufficiency predisposes to perivascular edema and lipodermatosclerosis, accompanied by ulceration in the lower extremities (Fagrell, 1979;Browse and Burnand, 1982;Burnand et al, 1982;Browse, 1983;Leach 1984;Franzeck et al, 1984;Moosa et al, 1987;Thomas et al, 1988). Conventional surgical approaches, i.e., excision of insufficient veins or thrombectomy, and reconstruction or transplantation of venous valves to the deep venous system of the lower extremities, often do not result in full restitution of blood flow in severe chronic venous insufficiency (Kistner, 1975;Taheri et al, 1985Taheri et al, , 1986Eriksson and Almgren, 1986;Jessup and Lane, 1988;Raju and Frederiks, 1988). Advances in clinical microsurgery have led to the use of free tissue transfer to treat recalcitrant venous stasis ulcers with excellent early success, but selection and evaluation of these patients has not been well documented (Ramirez, 1992).…”