DIEP Flap Breast Reconstruction In New York & Connecticut

Breast reconstruction can restore the form of a woman's breasts, and-not surprisingly-countless studies have demonstrated important emotional and psychological benefits for women who choose to have breast reconstruction.

Today, there are better options for breast reconstruction than ever before. Women who have undergone or plan to undergo mastectomy often face considerable emotional and psychological challenges. Breast reconstruction can help restore a woman's physical form and significantly improve quality of life.

Depending on the shape of your body and your personal preference, several areas of the body can act as a donor sites for flaps used in breast reconstruction. The Deep Inferior Epigastric Artery Perforator, or DIEP flap, which uses excess tissue from the lower abdomen, is the most commonly used perforator flap for breast reconstruction.

Perforator flaps do not contain muscle. Using highly specialized microsurgical techniques, by which the blood vessels can be carefully separated from the muscle that normally surrounds them, an experienced perforator flap microsurgeon can reconstruct a breast with a woman's own tissue and not sacrifice important functional muscles. In New York City and Fairfiled County, Connecticut, a very small number of board-certified plastic surgeons perform these procedures on a regular and consistent basis. Having a surgeon who has extensive experience (e.g., performing these procedures weekly or more often) is important if you are considering this type of breast reconstruction, as the degree of experience of the surgeon - as with other types of complex surgery such as cardiac surgery and pancreatic surgery - has been found to correlate with successful outcomes.

In addition to giving you excellent cosmetic results without compromising important functional muscles, perforator-flap breast reconstruction offers several advantages over implant-based breast reconstruction and muscle-flap breast reconstruction with procedures such as the TRAM flap.
Advantages include:
* A more natural look and feel to reconstructed breasts than can typically be obtained with implants
* Less postoperative pain than is typically associated with reconstruction using flaps that include muscle
* Reconstructed breasts that will grow and shrink naturally as one's weight changes, thereby keeping your reconstructed breast in proportion to your body
* Possible connection of sensory nerves in a perforator flap to nerves at the mastectomy site to help restore sensation to the reconstructed breast
* More rapid return to work and other activities than typically occurs following reconstruction with flaps that include muscle
* A significantly lower rate of unplanned reoperation (only 5%), as compared to the approximately 50% rate reported for implants 7 years after reconstruction
* Ability to reconstruct a breast after failure of an implant or other natural-tissue reconstruction, even after radiation