Short video excerpt where Robert Whitfield MD describes clinical experience in burn, oncology (breast and neck cancer) and trauma reconstruction and explains the traditional TRAM (transverse rectus abdominis myocutaneous) flap technique: using lower abdominal tissue left attached to a rectus ("six-pack") muscle and rotated to reconstruct the breast after mastectomy.
So we took care of all the burn patients, but pediatric and adults, we did oncology reconstruction for breast cancer and had neck cancer predominantly, and then certainly all sorts of other infections and trauma and things of that nature. And there had been a traditional technique called a tram flap, and that was where you left the lower tissue of the tummy, like if somebody has a little belly, the tissue below the level of the belly button, that would be used but left in continuity with one of the six pack muscles, and it would be rotated either to the same side or to the opposite side to help reconstruct the breast. Haptor mastectomy.
