Symptoms and patient’s satisfaction undergoing surgery with tissue expander with external port: Findings from a prospective quasiexperimental study

Abstract

Background: Tissue expanders are devices which are used to create enough skin to form suitable flap in restoration of great skin deficiencies which are not modified initially. The current study aimed at investigating the patients’ satisfaction and the complications such as rupture, hematoma, wound infection, seroma, leakage, chronic pain, and expander expose of internal (implanted under the skin) and external (implanted outside) ports. Materials and Methods: In a prospective  quasiexperimental study conducted at Alzahra and Imam Musa al-Kadhim educational referral hospitals in Isfahan, two matched groups of patients each one contained 38 patients undergone, external and internal ports, were followed-up weekly until the removal of expander and the injection was done weekly through port. The frequency of complications and patients’ satisfaction between two groups were compared. Results:The of age for patients in internal and external groups were 25.5 ± 8.7 and 24.7 ± 9, respectively (P = 0.71). There was significant
difference between average of operation time of internal and external group (97.3 vs. 79.6; P < 0.001). The rate of complications such as infection, hematoma, skin necrosis, and expander expose between two groups was comparable, while significant difference was found between groups in terms of pain intensity in injection [4.92(1.2) vs. 1.53(0.69), P < 0.001]. There was no significant difference between groups in terms of symptom incidence and tissue expander insertion place as well as patients’ satisfaction. Conclusion:Although internal port has favorite appearance; however, some complications such as skin infection due to frequent injection, pain rate are higher than external port lead to its more acceptability by the patients.

Key words: Complication, external port, internal port, patient’s satisfaction, tissue expan