The commonest surgical treatment for breast cancer is a Wide Local Exicision (lumpectomy) followed by radiotherapy. The advantages of this approach are that the breast is preserved and it usually results in minimal scarring and has little or no effect on the shape of the breast. Unfortunately however, it sometimes leads to deformity of the breast, or shrinkage of the breast resulting in breast asymmetry. If the deformed breast has previously been irradiated, then it is not usually possible to use an implant and any surgery to the irradiated breast (other than doing a mini-flap from non-irradiated tissue) usually results in wound healing problems. Despite this limitation, there are a number of options available for dealing with these deformities:

Fat grafting

•     Mini-flap to restore the shape
•     Reduce and reshape the opposite breast
•     Remove the whole breast and start again

Surgery to the opposite breast

The ideal goal of breast reconstruction is to produce a perfect match, in terms of size and shape, with the opposite breast. However, this is not always possible with reconstruction alone and about one third of all breast reconstruction patients may be offered some surgical procedure to their normal breast to achieve a reasonably good match. Matching operations to the normal breast include

•     Breast enlargement
•     Breast reduction
•     Breast uplift
•     Risk reducing mastectomy

Reshaping the Reconstructed Breast

•     using skin reduction
•     Liposuction
•     fat grafting