The Relevant Roles of Plastic and Orthopedic Surgery in Hand Salvage

Over the recent past few years, there is a huge innovation in plastic surgery and orthopedic surgery through implantation of new techniques, which enabled a great level of success in hand salvage. Conditions such as trauma, tumor, sepsis, or vascular disease, may necessitate hand salvage. The most frequent argument among surgeon from different subspecialties (orthopedics, plastics, trauma, and vascular surgery) are characterized by in what way each one can do his own part of the salvage operation, be it bony fixation, revascularization, or soft-tissue coverage, but none of them is sure whether it should be endeavored. What is necessary in such clinical situations is an interdisciplinary team attitude led by individual or groups of clinicians who are conversant not only with their identifiable subspecialized skills but also with those of their coworkers and the consequences accompanying the joined efforts at hand salvage. The perception of orthoplastic surgery is based on such an indication, where the integrated skills and techniques of the orthopedic surgeon and reconstructive microsurgeon are performed in recital to direct efforts concerning hand salvage or choose against it when it is not designated. The current article reviews the roles of orthopedic and plastic surgery and how this team can deal with the existing techniques to improve outcomes in hand salvage surgery.