Articles

Most of the articles I have written about free flap reconstruction focus on the procedure itself or on the hospital stay. Those are important, but they cover only the first week or two of what is a much longer process. Patients who have completed the acute phase of recovery — who are home, healing, and past the early milestones — often find themselves with a new set of questions: When will the swelling go down? Why does the reconstructed area feel numb? When can I eat normall

Major head and neck surgery — whether a jaw reconstruction, a neck dissection, a robotic resection of an oropharyngeal tumor, or a procedure requiring a free flap — is not a small undertaking. The operations themselves can range from three to twelve or more hours in the operating room, often followed by several days in an intensive care unit and a hospital stay measured in weeks, not days. What happens before you ever arrive at the hospital matters more than most patients rea

Surgery for head and neck cancer that involves free flap reconstruction is among the most complex procedures in our field. The operation itself — removing a tumor, rebuilding the defect with tissue transferred from another part of the body, and connecting that tissue to a new blood supply using microsurgery — is a significant undertaking. Patients and families who have been told this is the plan often have a clear question: what actually happens afterward? What does the hospi