DIEP Flap Breast Reconstruction
Breast Reconstruction, Techniques Comments Off
You’ve often read on our blogs that plastic surgeons have years of training beyond medical school and will often add a year of fellowship, working at the side of an older and more experienced surgeon to learn a particular skill.
One such area is microsurgery, operating on very tiny structures of the body through a microscope.
When women lose one or both breasts to cancer, a plastic surgeon often works with the cancer surgeon afterwards to rebuild the breasts.
Many physicians like the idea of a woman waking up from surgery and not seeing her breasts gone, with scars on her chests where her bosom used to be.
So the plastic surgeon often steps up to the table right after the mastectomy surgery.
The DIEP method takes extra flesh, fatty tissue – along with their blood supply vessels — from the woman’s stomach for use in building soft, warm, living breasts. The method is usually best for patients that need a small amount of tissue to reconstruct the breast mound or those who need both breasts reconstructed.
To get donor tissue, the surgeon uses the same incision across the binki line from hip to hip as he would in the tummy tuck procedure. Then, another curved incision is made in an arc from one side to another above the first incision.
The resulting flap — shaped like a large eye – is then moved to where the new breast will be. The long scars in the tummy area fade over time.
However, the vertical stomach muscles that create a “six-pack tummy” the rectus abdominis, are not touched.
Working at the location of the breast, the surgeon then painstakingly uses microsurgery to reconnect the blood supply to the new breast.
Then, the nipples are reconstructed from flesh on the new breast. Areolas are often created with tattoo ink. The procedure can take three to four hours.
Many patients say the DIEP (”Deep Inferior Epigastric Perforator” flap) breast is often
firmer and has a more youthful look than the natural breasts.
One 43-year-old DIEP patient wrote to her surgeon: “Not only am I cancer free, but I look much better than when I first came to you.”
Another patient wrote her surgeon after having DIEP reconstruction that, after 14 years after a divorce, she had her femininity back, had met a wonderful man and was getting married again.
admin @ May 22, 2009