Pedicle Tongue Flap for Palatal Fistula Closure.

BACKGROUND

Palatal fistulae are common sequels that appear in patients after surgical procedures in the palate. Considering the difficulty to achieve an effective treatment, there are many techniques to surgically manage fistulae, that is, the pedicle tongue flap.

OBJECTIVE

Being so, the main goal of this paper is to report cases of patients with palatal fistulae, from different etiologies, treated with anterior pedicle tongue flap.

PATIENTS: Eleven patients, 8 male and 3 female, mean age of 32 years old with palatal fistulae surgically treated with anterior dorsal tongue flaps. No flap was completely lost. There was 1 partial loss and 1 residual buconasal communication. The most common complaints of the patients were difficulty to perform oral hygiene and mild pain.

CONCLUSION

The use of anterior pedicle tongue flap for closing palatal fistulae demonstrates to be a safe procedure with high success rates (81% in this paper) when correctly indicated.