2006 - UZ Leuven

PLASTISCHE,RECONSTRUCTIEVE ENESTHETISCHE CHIRURGIEDELAERE P., HIERNER R., GOELEVEN A., D’HOORE A.: Reconstructionfor postcricoid pharyngeal stenosis after organ preservation protocols.The Laryngoscope, 2006; 116(3): 1-3.In cases of tracheal stenosis of less than 5 cm, standard surgicaltreatment is resection of the stenosed segment and end-to-endanastomosis or slide tracheoplasty. However in cases of longerstenosis this is unfeasible and augmentation is required. The idealtissue for tracheal grafting should closely resemble the native trachealtissue – well vascularised with a respiratory epithelium-lined mucousmembrane and cartilaginous support. Tracheal allografts or autograftsare not clinically available. We present a novel augmentationapproach, illustrating this by two patients with post-intubation longsegment tracheal stenosis and permanent Montgomery tubes.Definitive treatment was carried out by a multidisciplinary surgicalteam with otolaryngology, thoracic, and plastic surgery specialists.DICKENS S., VERMEULEN P., VRANCKX J.J.: Multi-lineage potential ofadult mesenchymal stem cells for tissue repair, familiar challenges.Novel strategies. J. Plast. Reconstr. Aesth. Surg., 2006; 59: S8.The future in off-the-shelf tissue equivalents requires enormousadvances in the fields of regenerative and extra cellular matrixbiology. The fabrication of the ideal construct requires that we furtherunravel the complex concerted process of extra cellular matrixassembly and fully understand the macro and micro architecture ofhuman tissues. Even more complex will be the anticipation of impactand integration of tissue-engineered scaffolds utilized in aberranthealing conditions when vascularization parameters are bad, anabolictendencies diminished due to cytostatica, corticosteroids or whenchronic inflammation exists. Therefore, the development of materialsthat can specifically and molecularly interact with cells in the defecthas become an emerging field in research. For example the more a72