November 3, 2017 – Reconstruction After Mastectomy

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Anchor lead: There are good reasons to consider reconstruction after mastectomy, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Women who have breast reconstruction after a mastectomy report improved quality of life, many studies have found. Women must be getting that message as more of them are choosing reconstruction, recent data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality indicate, showing many more women having the surgery, especially those over the age of 65. Gedge Rosson, a breast reconstruction expert at Johns Hopkins, comments.

Rosson: In our patients here at Hopkins we have definitely found patient’s quality of life improved just as much as patients who are younger, so if someone is healthy enough to have surgery, and you always have options of having some type of reconstruction that are shorter procedures and then there are some fancier reconstructions that are more lengthy procedures but for a healthy patient it shouldn’t matter what your age is and certainly we have plenty of patients who are over 65.   :27

Rosson encourages women to explore all their options when it comes to reconstruction. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.