About this Research Topic
For women who choose breast reconstruction surgery, two main considerations must be made: type and timing of reconstruction. Several reconstruction techniques are available: 2-stage tissue expander and implants (TE/I), single-stage direct-to-implant reconstruction (DTI), and autologous tissue grafts (ATR). Breast reconstruction can be initiated either at the time of mastectomy (immediate reconstruction) or at a later date (delayed reconstruction). Choosing the optimum type of reconstruction represents a clinically challenging situation that depends on patient’s preference, balancing the risks and benefits of each technique, baseline risk factors for reconstruction failure such as high BMI or smoking, and the need for postmastectomy radiation.
Nowadays techniques are rapidly evolving in order to provide the best in terms of quality of reconstruction and fast recovery. In particular breast reconstructive surgeon should consider the effect of adjuvant treatment and in particular radiotherapy effect on breast reconstruction. Several procedure are adopted in order to reduce its impact thus the most likely used are autologous tissue and fat grafting. Nevertheless scientific consensus is still missing. The new trend in prosthetic reconstruction is represented by prepectoral positioning. Such a procedure allow reduction of animation deformity and a faster hospital discharge on the other hand a good mastectomy flap viability is needed and the complete correlation with adjuvant oncological treatment should be fully understood.
A dedicated breast reconstructive surgeon should take into consideration several aspects related to patients desire, anatomical features and oncological history
For this reason we propose this special issue which purpose is to gather different experience in the new trends in breast reconstructive surgery.
Keywords: prepectoral breast reconstruction, acellular dermal matrix, autologous fat grafting, hybrid reconstruction, ALCL, prosthetic breast reconstruction, deep inferior epigastric flap, PAP flap, latissimus dorsi flap
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