Keywords:
Musculoskeletal soft tissue, Soft tissues / Skin, Ultrasound, Contrast agent-intravenous, Tissue characterisation
Authors:
S. Pozza, A. De Marchi, D. Bollero, M. Stella, C. Faletti; Turin/IT
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2013/C-0985
Methods and Materials
In collaboration with our colleagues of U.O.A.
Plastic Surgery during the period November 2009 – December 2011 were examined 18 patients (6 males,
12 females,
mean age 38 years,
range 19-59) for a total of 24 lipofilling interventions; 6 patients underwent surgery 2 times to the need to increase gradually the thickness of the subcutaneous tissue.
We used devices with multifrequency linear probes and specific software for contrast medium (SonoVue-Bracco).
All patients were examined with ultrasound B-mode and contrast-enhanced (CEUS) before surgery,
1 and 3 months postoperatively. We evaluated the thickness of the subcutaneous tissue pretreatment,
its increase after treatment and,
above all,
through the contrast medium,
the degree of vascularization of pretreatment subcutaneous adipose tissue and of the transplanted one.
Measurement of the transplanted tissue thickness,
which varies from case to case,
was the critical point of this work because it was necessary to make measurements in the same points; to overcome this difficulty photographs with dermographic landmarks have been taken as a reference for the following controls,
furthermore,
sonographic anatomical landmarks were also identified as a reference for the controls at 1 and 3 months (Fig.
5).