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Mastectomy without Reconstruction Questions about Mastectomy without Reconstruction. |
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| 3/25/2010 | I had the left breast mastectomy with sentinal node biopsy (sentinal node and one more node were removed, two in total) on 9 November 2009 . Stage 1,grade 1, E+,PR+,HER2-,tumor 7mm. No radiation, no chemo,now on tamoxifan. I am thinking about the mastectomy on the remaining breast. My doctor told me that she would check the sentinal node before the mastectomy, because if she does not and the pathology report will show the presence of cancer she will have to remove all lymph nodes. Would you recommend the bilateral mastectomy in my case? And if I have the sentinal node removed on the second breast which arm would be used to measure blood pressure or to take the blood for the test? Thank you for the time you devote to this site. | ||
| Replied | JHU's Breast Center Reply | ||
| 3/25/2010 | For women who do not carry a breast cancer gene, the average risk of breast cancer in the remaining breast is about 5%. quite low. when a patient chooses to do prophylactic mastectomy no sentinel node biopsy is needed. instead a mammogram of the breast a few weeks before surgery is to be done to verify that there appears to be no evidence of disease and this truly is preventative surgery. Unless a patient is consider DIEP flap reconstruction usually women don't do bilateral mast. DIEP flap recon involves harvesting the abdominal fat (but no muscle) to recreate a breast and the tummy fat that is unused is tossed therefore women oftentimes do opt to do bilateral mast and use the remaining tummy fat for the other side to create symmetry. L | ||
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