A Systematic Review on Tibial Cortex Transverse Transport in the Treatment of Ischemic Ulcers of the Lower Limb.

Background: Ischemic foot ulcers are a debilitating but common finding from many different conditions and can result in severe and life-threatening complications such as amputation and death. In recent years, tibial cortex transverse transport (TTT) has been used to treat ischemic ulcers with the aim to improve revascularization and wound healing. Our aim with this systematic review is to analyze the current literature to study the effects this surgery has on the treatment of ischemic ulcers of the lower limb.

Methods: A search was conducted using the 3 databases Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus to collate all articles associated with the use of TTT in the treatment of lower limb ischemic ulcers. Duplicate articles were removed, and the remaining articles were filtered and screened using set inclusion criteria such as patients with a diagnosed foot ulcer of ischemic origin, patients treated with TTT alone or combined with other techniques on the affected leg, unilateral or bilateral ischemic ulcers, studies that had evidence of treatment outcomes related to ulcer such as visual analog scale (VAS), ankle-brachial index (ABI) measurements, ulcer healing rate and time, recurrence rate, and complications. The exclusion criteria consisted of duplicated studies, overlapping data in studies, TTT used to treat nonulcerous conditions, other systematic reviews, articles with publication language other than English, no access to full text of article, and case reports.

Results: A total of 13 articles were included in the final selection, involving 924 patients, with 724 treated with TTT, in which 701 were diabetic patients. The results extracted demonstrated improvements in healing rates and times, vascular endothelial growth factor, ABI scores, VAS scores, and limb salvage. With regard to the complications and risks, pin-site infections and tibial fractures were infrequent and treated quickly.

Conclusion: Overall, the use of TTT has been associated with unusual success in improving revascularization and healing times in treating ischemic ulcers of the lower limb resulting in better outcomes for the patient and may provide a potential alternative treatment to the more conventional, widespread treatments currently used in clinical practice. Tibial fractures and pin-site infections are relatively rare complications that have been reported with use of this treatment.