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Breast reconstruction is a surgical procedure that restores shape to your breast after mastectomy — surgery that removes your breast to treat or prevent breast cancer.

One type of breast reconstruction uses breast implants — silicone devices filled with silicone gel or salt water (saline) — to reshape your breasts. Breast reconstruction with breast implants is a complex procedure performed by a plastic surgeon.

The breast reconstruction process can start at the time of your mastectomy, or it can be done later. The breast reconstruction process usually requires two or more operations — and several visits to your doctor — to insert, position and fill the breast implants.

Breast reconstruction won’t re-create the exact look and feel of your natural breast. However, the contour of your new breast may restore a silhouette similar to what you had before mastectomy.

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What Are The Risks?

Breast reconstruction with a breast implant carries the possibility of complications, including:

• Implant rupture or deflation

• Increased risk of future breast surgery to replace or remove the breast implant

• Changes in breast sensation

• Infection

• Bleeding

• Scar tissue that forms and compresses the implant and breast tissue into a hard, unnatural shape (capsular contracture)

Correcting any of these complications may require additional surgery. If you need adjuvant radiation therapy, you might not be an ideal candidate for breast implant reconstruction. Radiation therapy often leaves the skin and underlying tissue discolored or damaged. In such cases, doctors tend to recommend breast reconstruction with a tissue flap instead.

How You Prepare

Before a mastectomy, your doctor may recommend that you meet with a plastic surgeon. Consult a plastic surgeon who’s board certified and experienced in breast reconstruction following mastectomy. Ideally, your breast surgeon and the plastic surgeon will work together to develop the best surgical treatment and breast reconstruction strategy in your situation.

Your plastic surgeon will describe your surgical options and may show you photos of women who have had different types of breast reconstruction. Your body type, health status and cancer treatment factor into which type of reconstruction will provide the best result. The plastic surgeon provides information on the anesthesia, the location of the operation and what kind of follow-up procedures may be necessary.

Your plastic surgeon may recommend surgery on your opposite breast, even if it’s healthy, so that it more closely matches the shape and size of your reconstructed breast.

Before your surgery, follow your doctor’s specific instructions on preparing for the procedure. This may include guidelines on eating and drinking, adjusting current medications, and quitting smoking.

What You Can Expect

Breast reconstruction begins with placement of a breast implant or tissue expander, either at the time of your mastectomy surgery (immediate reconstruction) or during a later procedure (delayed reconstruction). Breast reconstruction often requires multiple operations, even if you choose immediate reconstruction.

Breast implants

A breast implant is a round or teardrop-shaped silicone shell, filled with salt water (saline) or silicone gel. Once restricted because of safety concerns, silicone gel implants are now considered safe.

A plastic surgeon places the implant behind the muscle in your chest (pectoral muscle). Some women are able to have the permanent breast implant placed at the time of the mastectomy. However, most women require a two-stage process, using a tissue expander before the permanent implant is placed.

Tissue expanders

Tissue expansion is a process that stretches your remaining chest skin and soft tissues to make room for the breast implant. Your surgeon places a balloon-like tissue expander under your pectoral muscle at the time of your mastectomy. Over the next few months, through a small valve under your skin, your doctor or nurse uses a needle to inject saline into the valve, filling the balloon in stages.

This gradual process allows the skin to stretch over time. You’ll go to your doctor every week or two to have the saline injected. You may experience some discomfort or pressure as the implant expands.

After the tissue is adequately expanded, your surgeon performs a second surgery to remove the tissue expander and replace it with a permanent implant. Some tissue expanders are designed to be left in place, so the second operation may be less extensive and require only local anesthesia.

Recovery

You may be tired and sore for a few weeks after surgery. Your doctor can prescribe medication to control your pain.

You may have drainage tubes for a short time after surgery to remove fluids that collect in the surgical site. The drainage tubes remain in place until the amount of fluid draining substantially decreases.

You’ll also have stitches (sutures) after your surgery. They’ll probably be absorbable, though, so you won’t need to have them removed. Scarring is permanent, but the scars generally fade over time.

Getting back to normal activities may take six weeks or longer. Take it easy during this period.

Your doctor will let you know of restrictions to your activities, such as avoiding overhead lifting or strenuous physical activities. Don’t be surprised if it seems to take a long time to bounce back from surgery — some women report that it took as long as a year or two before they felt completely healed and back to normal.

Generally, you’ll follow up with your plastic surgeon on a yearly basis to monitor your reconstructed breast. Make an appointment sooner than that, however, if you have any concerns about your reconstruction.

Nipple reconstruction

Breast reconstruction may also entail reconstruction of your nipple, if you choose, including tattooing to define the dark area of skin surrounding your nipple (areola).

Future breast cancer screening

If you’ve only had one breast reconstructed, you’ll need to have screening mammography done regularly on your other breast. Mammography isn’t necessary on breasts that have been reconstructed.

You may opt to perform breast self-exams on your natural breast and the skin and surrounding area of your reconstructed breast. This may help you become familiar with the changes to your breast after surgery so that you can be alert to any new changes and report those to your doctor.

Your doctor may recommend that you have magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) done every few years on your reconstructed breast to check for signs of implant rupture.

Results

Keep your expectations realistic when anticipating the outcome of your surgery. Breast reconstruction surgery offers many benefits, but it won’t make you look or feel exactly like you did before your mastectomy.

What breast reconstruction can do:

• Give you a breast contour

• Provide improved symmetry to your breasts so that they look similar under clothing or a bathing suit

• Help you avoid the need for an external prosthesis

What breast reconstruction may do:

• Improve your self-esteem and body image

• Partially erase the physical reminders of your disease

• Require additional surgery to correct reconstructive problems

What breast reconstruction won’t do:

• Make you look exactly the same as before

• Give your reconstructed breast the same sensations as your normal breast

To learn more about breast cancer, visit Mayo Clinic at: www.mayoclinic.org.

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