Bone imaging in the assessment of en bloc osteocutaneous autotransplantation.

A patient is presented who sustained an avulsed portion of the mandible and all soft tissues of the floor of the oral cavity, requiring an autogenous en bloc transplant to replace the avulsed tissues. The clinical role of bone imaging in assessing the patency of the microvasculature and viability of the vascularized osteocutaneous graft is discussed, and the criticality of the time of image acquisition in prognosticating the success of the transplantation is emphasized.