Quality of life in patients with oral hard or soft tissue defects after reconstructive microsurgery

Abstract

With current advances in medicine, many surgical methods have emerged for the reconstruction of soft and hard tissue defects of the head and neck. Current literature provides only a limited amount of evidence in studies addressing differences in quality of life for specific therapeutic measures in microvascular reconstruction. The validated University of Washington quality of life questionnaire version 4 (UW-QoL v4), a distress thermometer, and two questions addressing donor-site morbidity were sent to 134 patients at a tertiary care centre. All participants had undergone a type of microvascular reconstructive surgery of the head and neck. They were distributed into three groups according to the defect and type of treatment: defects reconstructed by soft-tissue microvascular tissue transfer, defects involving the hard tissue and treated by alloplastic reconstruction, and hard tissue defects receiving microvascular osseous reconstruction. A total of 82 patients completed the questionnaire in full and returned it. Patients from all the groups showed improved distress thermometer values postoperatively. Those who underwent osseous microvascular reconstruction had better functional items than those who had alloplastic reconstruction plates. Donor-site morbidity was rated low in all groups. Microvascular osseous reconstructive surgery might help to improve functional outcomes in patients with osseous defects more than alloplastic reconstruction.

Keywords: Distress thermometer; Head and neck; Microsurgery; Quality of life; Reconstructive surgery; University of Washington Quality of Life Questionnaire.