Dorothy Rider Pool Health Care Trust

This article presents information on an Affordable Care Act-mandated community health needs assessment process, which brought four hospitals and a foundation in Pennsylvania together to imbue the assessment with community contributions. Community health needs assessments that engage underserved communities can be powerful symbols of hospitals' interest in and commitment to finding solutions.

Large segmental long-bone defects deserve consideration for reconstruction by vascularized, straight, high-density cortical bone grafts of comparable diameter. If available, the tibial diaphysis would be an option superior to the fibula, since the latter has known limitations when a large size discrepancy exists at the recipient site. However, the former choice is unrealistic except in the most unusual circumstances, since the tibia is a nonexpandable bone required for weight bearing. In anticipation of just such a unique opportunity, we have investigated the surgical anatomy of the principal nutrient vessel of the shaft of the tibia in 53 fresh lower limb specimens. Classical descriptions of the pertinent vascular anatomy of the tibial shaft are inadequate, since the origin of its principal nutrient vessel actually may be from the popliteal bifurcation or anterior or posterior tibial vessels. In every dissection at least a single artery and vein of large caliber (both exceeding 1.5 mm in diameter in 85 percent of cadavers) were discovered entering a nutrient foramen, usually at the upper third of the tibia. Lead oxide injection studies of the nutrient artery alone in nine cadavers demonstrated no contiguous muscle or cutaneous communications. The large size of these nutrient vessels would simplify ipsilateral pedicled transfers of an autologous tibial shaft as well as facilitate microanastomoses for its distant transfer to other humeral, femoral, or contralateral tibial defects as in a salvage replantation. Once immunologic barriers have been conquered, these data should have even greater practical clinical significance for the use of vascularized tibial allografts for substitution in lieu of autogenous fibula or other conventional bone donor sites.

The assessment of viability of a pedicled nipple-areola complex after reduction mammoplasty frequently may be frustrating due to equivocal clinical signs of adequate blood flow. Although conversion to a composite graft is always a safe option, the aesthetic result may be inferior. An objective monitor might be beneficial to maximize the surgical outcome while minimizing the risk of nipple necrosis. Laser Doppler flowmetry provides a safe, simple, and noninvasive objective monitor that allows continuous intra-operative or postoperative evaluation of nipple perfusion. An evaluation of 31 nipples in 16 patients undergoing breast reduction based solely on the surgeon's judgment would have resulted in 9 false positive or negative results as compared with 3 using the laser Doppler. Four nipples that may otherwise have been converted to free grafts were instead preserved. However, conclusions from this data limit the laser Doppler as a valuable supplement, but not a replacement, for experienced clinical acumen.