The Gustave-Roussy Institute is completing its clinical trial phase for robot-assisted breast cancer surgery. This method makes it possible to combine removal of the breast and placement of a breast implant in a single operation, leaving very little scar.
Remove a diseased breast and replace it immediately afterwards with an implant using a robot-assisted technique. This is the ambitious project of the Gustave-Roussy Institute, which specializes in cancer. Clinical phases within the establishment located in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne) are currently about to be completed.
The method developed, the first of its kind in the world, consists in proposing a double intervention of mastectomy (removal of the breast) and breast reconstruction performed in one go. It is intended for women with a tumour, but also for those wishing to prevent the occurrence of breast cancer.
This total breast removal surgery, with simultaneous breast reconstruction by prosthesis, was performed using the Da Vinci Xi robot. It allows the incisions to be placed under the armpit.
A less traumatic operation
The robot is responsible for operating the patient and removing the breast. The doctor then takes over to insert the implant. One of the advantages of this method is that it leaves a discreet scar located at the level of the armpit, no larger than four or five centimeters.
This technique which could be “officially authorized in the coming months” according to our colleagues from France infois part of the marked will of the Gustave Roussy Institute to operate on the breasts “without mutilating them”, by attaching great importance to breast reconstruction.
“The objective is to offer, within the regulated and safe framework of a clinical trial, a surgical alternative, more aesthetic and less psychologically traumatic to women who must undergo breast removal followed by immediate reconstruction”, explained in 2016 on the institute’s website, Dr. Benjamin Sarfati, plastic surgeon and oncologist at Gustave-Roussy who initiated this medical innovation.
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