Complications of Metabolic Dysfunction in Head and Neck Microvascular Reconstruction.

Objective: To understand how metabolic health influences surgical success and improves prognostication in head and neck cancer reconstruction. Methods: Retrospective cohort study. Chart review was performed on patients that underwent head and neck microvascular reconstruction by a single surgeon between 2010 and 2022. Demographic, postoperative complications, and long-term patient outcomes were collected. Patients were divided into cohorts based on the diagnosis of DM, hypertension, and BMI > 25. Those with all three comorbidities constituted the metabolic dysfunction (MetD) cohort, while the remainder group constituted the non-MetD cohort. The non-MetD group was divided into a control sub-cohort of patients with none of the three comorbidities. Outcomes were compared between groups. Postoperative complications were compared using student's Results: Data was available for 926 patients distributed in MetD (91), non-MetD (835), and the control (226) cohorts; the MetD was significantly older ( Conclusion: Our study showed that within our single-surgeon population, patients with diagnosed hypertension, DM, and BMI > 25 did not experience a significantly greater incidence of most postoperative complications compared to patients without those co-morbidities after head and neck microvascular reconstruction. Level of Evidence: Level 4.