The use of a single-piece bone flap for cranial reshaping in anterior craniosynostosis patients: clinical experience and a description of a novel technique

Abstract

Background: Craniosynostosis is known as premature closure of one or more of the cranial sutures. Anterior craniosynostosis involves anterior plagiocephaly and trigonocephaly. One of the issues in anterior craniosynostosis skull reshaping is maintaining an aesthetically pleasing forehead curve. Therefore, in this article, we demonstrate our novel technique to use a single-piece bone flap for cranial reshaping of the anterior mold in patients diagnosed with anterior craniosynostosis. A retrospective record review of patients who underwent single piece bone flap cranial reshaping for correction of unicoronal synostosis (UCS) and metopic synostosis (MS) at an Academic Institute in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, between 2018 and 2020, was conducted. Results: Six non-syndromic consecutive patients were included. Three of the patients had MS. The mean age at surgery was 11.16 months (range, 6–19 months). The average OR time was 315 min (range, 263–368 min). The average intraoperative blood loss was 225 ml (range, 100–400 ml). All patients had achieved acceptable functional and aesthetic results. Conclusion: Our novel technique is an innovative and efficient reconstructive technique to simultaneously address MS and UCS and minimize intraoperative bleeding and surgery time. However, more studies with more cases are required.