Oncoplastic breast reconstruction with omental flap: A retrospective study and systematic review

The increasing frequency of early breast cancer cases has driven an increasing number of patients to choose immediate reconstruction with an autologous flap. Omentum-flap-based breast reconstruction is a unique strategy that is highly suitable for repairing moderate tissue defects. However, all available evidence comes from individual reports with small numbers of cases, and the overall effectiveness and safety of the procedure have yet to be reported. Here, we reported 7 cases of laparoscopically harvested omental free flap breast reconstruction and performed a systematic review to assess the applicability and safety of this approach. The data were gathered from MEDLINE, Ovid, Google Scholar and the China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database. In total, we combined 15 articles (410 cases) for analysis. The data revealed that almost all patients (87.6%) were reported to have undergone laparoscopy instead of laparotomy; pedicle flaps were used in 90.9% of the cases, while only 5 (37 cases) used free flaps for reconstruction; and 96.6% (396/410) of all reconstruction procedures were immediate. Almost all of these cases had a small tumour burden (T0/Tis/T1 59.8%; T2 36.8%), and the distribution of tumour location was similar among the four quadrants. The cosmetic outcomes were desirable in most cases (83.9%). There were 41 complications identified in the dataset: partial graft necrosis accounted for the largest percentage (41.5%) of all events, followed by skin necrosis (19.5%), haematoma (12.2%) and wound infection (9.8%). During the follow-up period, which had a short median duration, 2 cases of tumour recurrence were reported. Overall, our systematic review found that omentum-flap-based breast reconstruction could achieve a satisfactory aesthetic outcome, especially for small breasts and tissue replacement after breast-conserving surgery, and the safety of the procedure was also acceptable.