Mastectomy Defined & Explained by Breast Surgeon Dr. Harness

>>>Dr. Harness: Mastectomy is the removal of the breast. Now, the good news with mastectomy is that this is not your grandmother or great-grandmother’s mastectomy. The mastectomies that we do in this day and age and can be done in ways that are cosmetically so much better than what we did historically, and I think part of the history here is important to review. In the late 1800s Halsted invented the radical mastectomy, and frankly, I was involved with some of those even in my training in the 1970s, where not only was the whole breast removed with the muscles and as much skin as we could and all of the lymph nodes. It was absolutely horrible. And so when you mention the word “mastectomy,” often people that kind of image jumps into their mind, because they remember seeing how disfigured their grandmother was or whoever. Fortunately then, we moved forward into what was called skin sparing mastectomies where removing the *** areolar area, but saving all the skin, so that we can do reconstruction and we will talk more about reconstruction later, but typical reconstruction is done in two stages, first stage involves the placement of a tissue expander and then a second stage involves a placement of a permanent implant. Now what I am pleased about is the emergence now of *** sparing mastectomy. At breastcanceranswers.com I have got a description of eligibility for ***-sparing mastectomies and I will talk more about that in a subsequent video, but the concept for the *** sparing mastectomy in selective cases is, we leave all of the skin, we leave the *** areolar area, hopefully we can come in and an incision down here in the inframammary fold below the breast and another one here in the axilla or the armpit area, so that when the patient is reconstructed, these incisions are hidden and she is feeling cosmetically really good about herself. Now one of the real misconceptions about mastectomy is “oh gosh I have a big operation like a mastectomy, I am going to do better” not true. The survival from breast cancer is the same whether a patient has a lumpectomy or a mastectomy and there are certain times where we actually need to do a mastectomy and not a lumpectomy and we can talk more about that subsequently, but the bigger the operation does not mean Gee Dr. Harness I will not need chemotherapy or gee I will not need tamoxifen or one of those other things. As I have said on the video about invasive breast cancer, once we start shutting off cancer cells elsewhere in the body with any stage of invasive breast cancer, we need to treat the whole body. So summarizing the mastectomy, it is a removal of the breast. We are always then finding out what is going on with the lymph nodes at the same time. It also can be done with reconstruction or actually without reconstruction. Some patients choose not to be reconstructed and therefore we want the skin down nice and flat, so its easier to wear prostheses in the bra, but please remember that because this is usually being done for invasive cancer, sometime we do it for in situ often then you do need additional therapies. ***** Hi, I am Dr. Jay Harness and I want to share with you an important information that I believe that every newly diagnosed patient with breast cancer needs to know. Susan Denver: “I am a breast cancer survivor.” Katherine Stockton: “I am a breast cancer survivor.” Coree: “I am a breast cancer survivor…” Susan Denver: “…and I want every woman to know…” Katherine Stockton: “…about personalized breast cancer treatment…” Susan Denver: “…and the Genomic Test.” Coree: “A test that helps guide a woman and her doctor…” Katherine Stockton: “…to the best treatment options for her.” Susan Denver: “Pass it on!”