Reconstructive breast surgery

The surgeon aims to create a breast that looks like the natural breast shape, in its tact and its development. He seeks to do it with minimal sacrifice for the patient, that means rebuilding without destroying. However, below these two specific objectives, underlies a large broader objective to reconstruct the woman who has suffered from breast cancer.

With this main objective, each specialist in breast reconstruction sets out every reconstruction surgery as a unique case, having all the reconstructive techniques, even the most advanced.

Reporting patients

Patients must be aware of breast reconstruction options before undergoing mastectomy so as to help them to reduce the anxiety that often leads losing chest.

Each patient must have enough information to choose the best treatment freely, with the help and the guidance of plastic surgeon, in which she could feel most comfortable with. In this sense, after breast cancer treatment, women are usually placed in front of three realities: remaining with the chest removed after mastectomy, using external prostheses to simulate and reproduce the natural appearance of the breast or undergoing plastic surgery in order to reconstruct the breast and leave behind physical scars marked by breast cancer and its treatments.

Breast reconstruction: an aesthetic and a psychological solution

Most women can undergo a breast reconstruction technique and may even be eligible for immediate reconstruction, that means being reconstructed at the same time as the mastectomy is performed. The medical team should decide the ideal time for this process in conjunction with plastic surgeon.

However, according to the Spanish Society of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery (SECPRE), only 12% of women choose rebuilding the chest in Spain. This is due to the lack of enough information after the diagnosis and during and treatment of the disease. After breast reconstruction, women not only get an aesthetic improvement, but also a functional improvement. The reconstruction must satisfy the aesthetic objective of recovering the contour of the breast and also to get the woman to feel again the chest as part of her body in each moment of her life such as when hugging his partner, sunbathing on the beach or looking herself in the mirror.

Reconstructive techniques

Different reconstructive techniques can be classified into three main categories: techniques that use breast implants, techniques that rely on patients' autologous tissues and techniques that combine both reconstructive procedures.

Breast reconstruction with implants: these techniques add volume to the breast through the implantation of prosthesis in the chest area. Among them, the best known-and one of the most used in previous decade-s is the technique of tissue expansion with implant. These surgeries are relatively simple from a surgical point of view but, in turn, they should provide good results in most cases. Moreover, as the implants have limitations, their outcomes are not definitive.

Breast reconstruction with autologous tissue: these are techniques that use the patients' own tissues, the most similar to the breast for the reconstruction. These techniques are even more complex, but they bring more satisfactory and lasting results for patients. They also employ fat and tissue of the abdomen and buttocks in order to get a new chest in a single surgery session. This technique, also known as "autologous reconstruction", can be performed immediately after the mastectomy or in the next years.

Breast Reconstruction using combined techniques: they combine both techniques described above, that means patients' autologous tissues with implants.