Treatment of radiological ulcers in the chest wall after breast cancer surgery

  Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women, and it is estimated that nearly one million patients suffer from it each year in China. More and more patients are opting for breast-conserving surgery, which requires whole-breast radiation therapy after surgery, and radiation ulceration of the chest wall is a common long-term complication. Its occurrence is correlated with radiation dose, treatment duration, local flap blood flow and incision healing quality. Long-term non-healing, local ulceration and odor of chest wall radiation ulcers seriously affect the physical and mental health and family life of patients, and even make them painful.  Radiation irradiation causes local ischemic changes such as necrosis of blood vessel walls, occlusive vasculitis, and vascular embolism in tissues . The radiation injury is progressive, and once the ulcer is formed, it is difficult to have healthy granulation tissue formation and new blood vessel network, and the injury often spreads to the ribs, intercostal muscles, wall pleura and even lung lobes, so the possibility of self-healing is very small. It may even be fatal secondary to malignancy, chest wall sinus tracts, chest wall defects, etc.  Because there is no healthy granulation tissue growth in the lesion, the survival rate of skin flaps after surgery is very low, and the surgery fails to improve the local tissue poor blood flow, that is, the skin flap barely survives after surgery is also prone to ulcer recurrence. Therefore, the use of hemorrhagic skin flap or myocutaneous flap to repair the wound, which carries blood can increase the blood supply to the lesion and surrounding tissues, improve the local tissue nutrition, so that part of the “inter-ecological” tissue to regain vitality, and the residual necrotic tissue can produce “biological excision “This can eliminate or reduce the inflammatory changes in the local tissues. Commonly used flaps include: latissimus dorsi flap, transverse rectus abdominis muscle flap (TRAM flap), longitudinal rectus abdominis flap, free DIEP flap, lateral thoracic artery perforator flap, breast fascia flap, etc.