Background: The usage of submental flap is a good method for head and neck reconstruction, but it has some risk also, such as anatomical variations and surgical errors.In this article, we present a modified incision design for the submental flap.Methods: We designed a modified submental flap incision method based on the overlap of the incision outline of the submental flap, platysma myocutaneous flap and infrahyoid myocutaneous flap.If we found that the submental flap was unreliable during the neck dissection at the level Ⅲ, Ⅱ and Ⅰb areas, the infrahyoid myocutaneous flap or platysma myocutaneous flap was used to replace it.Between 2004 and 2012, we performed 30 cases using this method.As control, 33 radial forearm free flaps were counted.Significant differences were evaluated using the x2 test and MannWhitney U.Survival and recurrence were analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method.