This is in response to the letter by Massarelli et al., regarding our technical note on the islanded facial artery musculomucosal flap for tongue reconstruction . We thank Massarelli et al. for bringing their article on the trilobed buccinator myomucosal flap to our notice and agree with them that our technique of harvesting the flap is identical to the method described by them .

Although the technique of flap harvest and tunnelling is identical , the shape of the flap in our experience, now around 40 cases, has not been trilobed, as described by Massarelli et al. , but contoured according to the defect.