Although removal of the breast remains necessary in 20% of breast cancer cases, it is increasingly possible to have the breast directly reconstructed during the operation.
- Reconstruction after ablation is, in the majority of cases, offered on a deferred basis, leaving the patient amputated for a period of 6 to 18 months.
- However, the evolution of surgical and radiotherapy techniques now makes it possible to offer immediate breast reconstruction to practically all women suffering from breast cancer.
Despite therapeutic advances, removal of the breast remains necessary in 20% of breast cancer cases. Currently, reconstruction after ablation is, in the majority of cases, offered on a deferred basis, leaving the patient amputated for a period of 6 to 18 months. In the end, less than 50% of mastectomized patients are finally reconstructed.
The breast is reconstituted during the ablation
However, “immediate breast reconstruction (the breast is reconstituted during removal) is an alternative that has proven its major benefits in terms of quality of life”, underline the French Breast Institute and the Clinique de l’Alma in a joint press release.
Breast reconstruction is often limited to prophylactic mastectomies (patients without cancer, but at high genetic risk) and pre-cancers. This limitation, which deprives thousands of women each year of reconstruction, was until now essentially linked to the impossibility of combining a breast prosthesis with radiotherapy.
Except, “the evolution of surgical and radiotherapy techniques, as well as the many results of clinical research studies, now make it possible to overcome this limitation without risk in order to offer immediate breast reconstruction to practically all women suffering from breast cancer. breast”, explain the French Breast Institute and the Clinique de l’Alma.
Reconstruction techniques without prosthesis
“The use of reconstruction techniques without prosthesis with the patient’s own tissues (DIEP flap, PAP, etc.) and the performance of radiotherapy before breast removal, greatly open the field of immediate reconstruction”, pursue health professionals.
With 60,000 new cases every year, breast cancer ranks first among incident cancers in women, well ahead of colorectal cancer and lung cancer. Breast cancer screening (recommended every 2 years for women aged 50 to 74, editor’s note) is all the more interesting as the 5-year survival of affected patients is improving more and more: it has gone from 80% for patients diagnosed between 1989 and 1993 to 87% for those diagnosed between 2005 and 2010. As a result, the mortality rate linked to breast cancer decreases from year to year.
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