BREAST RECONSTRUCTION
Navigating the Breast Reconstruction Process
Individualized Consultation: The journey begins with a one-on-one consultation, where our surgeons assess your unique circumstances, answering questions and addressing concerns.
Varied Surgical Approaches: Breast Reconstruction techniques are diverse, utilizing natural tissues, implants, or a combination based on individual needs. Whether utilizing fat transfers via liposuction, direct to implant technique, fat grafting, or using tissue expanders (a two-stage surgery), our surgeons craft a tailored plan to achieve natural, aesthetically pleasing results.
Thoughtful Recovery: Understanding that recovery is as vital as the procedure itself, Naples Plastic Surgery prioritizes your comfort. Post-procedure recovery is monitored with care at the local hospital where the procedure will take place.
Post-Mastectomy Breast Reconstruction in Naples
While many breast reconstruction surgeries are conducted soon after the mastectomy, the procedure can also be performed months or years after a mastectomy or lumpectomy.
Prior to any surgery, our surgeons always meet with their individual patients in a one-on-one consultation and physical examination to evaluate all elements of the planned reconstructive procedure. This evaluation will be tailored according to whether the mastectomy is planned or has already been performed, with typical elements addressed during the consultation including:
Recovering from Post-Mastectomy Reconstruction
The recovery period for post-mastectomy breast reconstruction depends largely upon the scope of the mastectomy and reconstruction, as well as the overall health of the patient. Usually, as an outpatient procedure, most patients are released to go home several hours after the procedure, though some stay overnight at the hospital for additional monitoring.
After the procedure itself, patients can expect to experience bruising, swelling, and soreness in procedure areas, but this will be alleviated with prescribed pain and anti-inflammatory medications. Your surgeon may suggest other post-operative care conditions as warranted. Many patients are able to return to work and most normal daily activities within two weeks, though some patients may need additional recovery time.
Hi, it’s Dr. Bonett at Naples Plastic Surgery. So how does breast reconstruction work after a mastectomy? Unfortunately, breast cancer is very common. Fortunately, it is often caught early, and so sometimes you might be able to get away — if you’re unfortunate enough to have a breast cancer diagnosis — with a lumpectomy, which is a small, sometimes a golfball size for example, piece of tissue that can cause a deformity of the breast, we can do reconstruction.
Most commonly, there’s going to be a complete mastectomy, which is removing all the breast tissue, and often times the nipple and areola complex as well. Then you’re talking about full breast reconstruction. So the way to think about a mastectomy is the breast surgeon is removing all the breast tissue under the skin, and they’re leaving behind all the skin of the breast which is continuous with your chest and your abdomen. Breast reconstruction is really restoring that volume again.
There’s two main categories of breast reconstruction. You can call is alloplastic breast reconstruction of autologous. Alloplastic means using implants. Autologous means using your own tissue. Using implants is more common still, but autologous, or using your own tissue, is becoming more and more common. The best procedure for autologous reconstruction is using your abdominal tissue. It is a pretty major surgery, and it’s considered a micro surgery and usually performed at academic centers or big institutions. Because of all the resources that requires, it is still most common to use implants for reconstruction.
If we’re deciding to go the alloplastic or implant based route, sometimes you can actually have implants placed on the day of the mastectomy. That’s called direct to implant reconstruction. But what’s more traditionally done is a two step approach where at the same time as the mastectomy is performed, a tissue expander is put in, which is kind of a space saver, and something you can add volume to over time, so there’s not too much stress on the skin at the time of the mastectomy. Then there is a second much smaller surgery later where that tissue expander is removed and the final implant goes in. At that time we can often do other procedures like fat transfer from the abdomen or the thighs to the skin of the breast to help with smaller irregularities.
Breast reconstruction is a huge topic to cover in one minute, but when you come in for a consultation we really take our time to talk to you about the entire process and all the steps involved.
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