Journal time! This may seem like common sense, but science is good to evaluate these things. This is a study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. It was by Dr. Fischer out of the University of Pennsylvania. They were looking at factors which might cause healing issues in patients doing immediate breast reconstruction after breast cancer. How can we assess the risk?
“The goal of our study was reallly to determine which patients are at greatest risk for experiencing significant complications with their implants in the first 30 days after breast reconstruction.”
- They looked at 14,585 women
- Ages between 40-60
- Findings?
- Smoking increases early implant risk by 3 times
- Obesity increases risk by 2-3 times. The more the severe the state of obesity, the higher the risk
- Age older than 55
- Operative risk increased with bilateral reconstruction, and immediate implant (instead of a 2 stage tissue expander first and then a second operation to place the implant.)
So what do I think?
This is a good study due to the numbers- anytime you do a study with 100 people, a study showing the same thing with 14,000 people really confirms it. None of this is news though. Increased risk with smoking, obesity, and post menopausal women have all been shown in other studies. But they do offer a risk calculator as a tool prior to surgery. This may help patients understand the increased risk, and may change what surgery they choose to do or the timing/staging.
NOTE: The overall risk in the study was less than 1 percent. Even those at “high risk” the rate was 3.86%.