Analyzing the effect of undermining on suture forces during simulated skin flap surgeries with a three-dimensional finite element method

Abstract

Skin flaps are common procedures used by surgeons to cover an excised area during the reconstruction of a defect. It is often a challenging task for a surgeon to come up with the most optimal design for a patient. In this paper, we set up a simulation system based on the finite element method for one of the most common flap types — the rhomboid flap. Instead of using the standard 2D planar patch, we constructed a 3D patch with multiple layers. This allowed us to investigate the impact of different undermining areas and depths. We compared the suture forces for each case and identified vertices with the largest suture force. The shape of the final suture line is also visualized for each case, which is an important clue when deciding on the most optimal skin flap orientation according to medical textbooks. We found that under the optimal undermining setup, the maximum suture force is around 0.7 N for top of the undermined layer and 1.0 N for bottom of the undermined layer. When measuring difference in final suture line shape, the maximum normalized Hausdorff distance is 0.099, which suggests that different undermining region can have significant impact on the shape of the suture line, especially in the tail region. After analyzing the suture force plots, we provided recommendations on the most optimal undermining region for rhomboid flaps.