Plastic surgeons work closely with breast surgeons and assist them very often in breast tumor excisions. Sometimes excision of a breast lesion can be extended, leaving the breast with a serious deformity. In other cases the patient’s breast is relatively small and an excision may alternate its shape.
The plastic surgeon will examine the area carefully, evaluate the severity and grade of deformity and suggest possible solutions to correct it. These are the use of surgical flaps from different areas of the body, fat transfer or silicone implants. Any type of reconstruction is decided with the breast surgeon and the oncologist, and is performed when additional therapies, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, have completed.
When the tumor excised is centrally based and wide local excision includes the nipple-areola complex, then nipple reconstruction – to create a new nipple and medical tattooing – to color the areola can be combined to recreate a natural looking breast.
