“Restoring sensation to the patient’s breast…is the final frontier of breast reconstruction,” says Dr. Dung Nguyen, Director of Breast Reconstruction at Stanford University’s Women's Cancer Center. Nguyen is pioneering a surgical approach that preserves at the time of mastectomy many of the nerves supplying sensation to the patient’s nipple and skin. Once that’s done, the surgeons can then regenerate (or neurotize) the patient’s own nipple and skin with these nerves, says Dr. Nguyen, “so that after surgery they have a better chance of regaining their sensation.”
This approach which is actually called breast reinnervation after mastectomy is still being studied, but Dr. Nguyen says the results are very promising.
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