If you’re faced with the choice of whether to reconstruct your breast after cancer, figuring out how to preserve your natural appearance is a huge issue.
In a procedure called “nipple-sparing mastectomy,” doctors use special techniques to shell out a woman’s breast, leaving the skin, and the nipple intact. The idea is to maintain, as close as possible anyway, the natural look of the breast. After mastectomy, a plastic surgeon will use either an implant or the woman’s own tissue to recreate the breast. When a woman’s own tissue is used, doctors typically take it from fat in the patient’s lower abdomen.
Read More “It is certainly the ideal procedure for those woman who chose to have prophylactic mastectomy who don’t yet have breast cancer,” says Dr. Irene Wapnir, a breast surgeon at Stanford Medicine. The downside to this type of procedure, says Dr. Wapnir, is a loss of sensation in the nipple area.
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