[The contribution of sliding skin flaps in the follow-up treatment of facial burns].

Treatment of panfacial burns is a difficult challenge for the plastic surgeon. Although excision-grafting procedures can be used to provide sufficient skin of sufficient quality, inevitable skin retraction will, in the long run, produce the typical "burned face" aspect (retraction of the periorificial zones, smoothing out of the main skin folds). The grafted face then looks like a flat, rigid and unexpressive mask unable to perform its social function as an organ of expression and mimic. In order to reestablish the main facial features, we used sliding skin flaps which were either grafted immediately or during a second operation. We report here our experience and give details on the technical points and indications as well as the advantages and disadvantages of this method.