Breast Reconstruction after Mastectomy

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

LESS than a decade ago, reconstruction of the breast after mastectomy was still controversial and uncommon. Today it is a much more accepted treatment, and the demand for it is increasing sharply. An estimated 98,000 breast reconstructions were performed in 1984 in the United States, as compared with 20,000 in 1981.1 Several factors are responsible for this change: the development of better, safer techniques and the availability of more surgeons able to perform them; the perception by the medical profession that breast reconstruction neither promotes metastases nor obscures recurrences but benefits the patient psychologically; dissemination of information about breast reconstruction . . .