Abstract: Objective　The effects of sural nerve nutritional vascular flap, medial foot flap, lateral heel flap and foot and ankle epithelial flap for skin flap repair in patients with soft tissue defects of the foot and ankle were compared. To explore the effect of different types of skin flaps in repairing soft tissue defects of the foot and ankle. Methods　The data of 80 patients with foot and ankle soft tissue defects was retrospectively analyzed. Among the 80 patients, 25 patients were repaired with sural nerve nutritional vascular flap (group A), 20 patients with medial foot flap (group B), 15 patients with lateral flap (group C), and 20 patients with ankle and ankle flap (group D). All the patients were followed up for 6 months after operation. The post-healing situation and the American Ankle Orthopedics Association's Ankle Scale (AOFAS) were compared among all the groups. Results　There were no significant differences in the number of cases of infection, vascular crisis, good appearance, soft texture and recovery of walking function among all groups (P>0.05), the flap survival rate in group A were higher than that of group C and group D (P<0.05). The excellent and good rate of AOFAS ankle hindfoot score of group A was higher than that of the other three groups (P<0.05). Conclusion　The soft tissue defect of foot and ankle should be repaired according to the defect location, the sural nerve nutritional vascular flap is a good method for repairing the soft tissue defect of foot and ankle with high survival rate, which is beneficial to the functional recovery of the affected limb.

Key words: Flap repair, 　Foot and ankle, 　Soft tissue defect