Soft tissue defects of the hand: etiology and classification

Abstract

Soft tissue defects of the hand may result from trauma, oncological procedures, or severe infections. Different etiologies have been discussed. In all cases, an accurate clinical examination is mandatory to understand which structures are involved and what must be reconstructed. It can be helpful to simplify the decision-making process to classify these lesions. However, there is no consensus on which classification is best to be used among those described in the literature. This review presents the most common ones, differentiating those classically used to describe tissue loss consequential to a traumatic event from those used to classify soft tissue defects consequent to other events.

Keywords

Soft tissue / defect / trauma / oncological / infection / tissue loss

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