Study Shows Women Battling Breast Cancer Now Have New Option for Reconstruction at the Same Time as Mastectomy

(PRWEB) August 02, 2011

Cassileth One-Stage Breast Reconstruction offers customized, natural looking breasts immediately after one surgery.

For the first time, women can now wake up from a double mastectomy with customized breasts with virtually no scars. This new procedure was reviewed in a recently released study entitled ?One-Stage Immediate Breast Reconstruction With Implants? published in the "Annals of Plastic Surgery."

One in eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. More women are opting for mastectomy with reconstruction. In 2010 more than 250,000 new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in America. Last year, 93,083 reconstructive surgeries were performed. That?s an eight percent rise from the 78,832 in 2000. The majority of these women are choosing reconstruction with implants.

There was a time when women had to wake up from the mastectomy enduring the trauma of having no breasts. Then in ?90s a two-stage option of tissue-expander reconstruction became available. Today immediate implants at the time of reconstruction have become an option with limited use. The current immediate implant option offers women up to a 200-gram breast size reconstruction. So if a woman is a 750- gram breast size, she is forced to go smaller with the current one-stage procedure. The alternative is the painful process of the two-stage tissue expander procedure that involves expanding the skin with a temporary implant placed during the mastectomy followed by the additional fear and anxiety that a woman endures for the second surgery to place the permanent implant ?until now.

Dr. Lisa Cassileth, a reconstruction surgeon specialist in Beverly Hills, uses acellular dermal matrix (healthy donor tissue) to build an internal customized bra that can hold a silicone implant of any size. Dr. Cassileth sculpts the two-dimensional sheets of tissue into a three-dimensional bra-like shape that mirror the natural shape of the breast and then she tailors the tissue to the woman?s body-type, size and measurements. This eliminates the flat bump-like appearance that characterizes the current immediate implant approach. During the mastectomy, she works side-by-side with the oncologist to reconstruct the breasts and make tiny incisions. Post surgery, she conceals the incisions with a nipple reconstruction to erase any reminders of the mastectomy.

Dr. Cassileth conducted the study on 43 women and a total of 78 breasts. According to the study based on the judgments of patients and independent observers, this one-stage immediate reconstruction is superior in aesthetic outcome. Dr. Cassileth?s patients are even trading their older models, for newer, bigger, perkier breasts that they report are better looking than their own. This new option minimizes recovery time, costs, discomfort and psychological adjustment that accompany the current two-stage tissue expander procedure.

Survey studies report that an important factor in the choice for mastectomy is fear of recurrence. Studies also reported that the choice for conservation of the breast was due to a concern about the cosmetic outcome. This latest One-Stage Immediate Breast Reconstruction provides women for the first time with a solution to prevent breast cancer recurrence without sacrificing the aesthetics.

We have two patients who could really help tell this story. Alice Crisci is 31. She is young, frank and honest in sharing her story about dealing with the repercussions of breast cancer and her new set of breasts. Mary Beth De Lucia is 52 and shares her story of finding Dr. Cassileth to do the one-stage immediate reconstruction instead of having to endure the two-stage expanders to achieve her natural breast-size after the mastectomy.????

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