Harvesting of Oral Mucosal Grafts

The sustained preference for oral mucosa as an autologous graft in substitution urethroplasty is due to its stratified squamous epithelium mirroring the pseudostratified columnar or stratified squamous epithelium of the urethra [1, 2]. This similarity imparts several advantages including adaptability to a moist environment, inherent resistance to infection, and the presence of a submucosal pan-laminar plexus that supports angiogenesis and graft revascularization, thereby facilitating early inosculation [1–3]. The two main oral mucosal graft sites are the buccal and lingual mucosa [1]. Since the pioneering use of the buccal mucosal graft (BMG) by Sapezhko in 1894, it has become the gold standard for tissue substitution [4]. A contemporary alternative, introduced by Simonato et al. in 2008, is the lingual mucosal graft (LMG), which is gaining popularity and yielding results comparable to BMG [5, 6].