Reconstruction
Breast reconstruction involves using your own tissue or prosthetic material to rebuild a natural looking breast. Often this includes recreating a natural-looking areola and nipple. Breast lifting or augmentation techniques are often adapted to aid breast reconstruction.
During surgery: In reconstructing a breast, the breast mound can be rebuilt, using local tissue such as tummy fat, skin and muscle, or using back muscle and skin from the latissimus dorsi. This may be combined with a tissue expander and a staged replacement of the expander with a permanent implant, once the soft tissue has been stretched. Alternatively, simple expansion and implants may be used alone if there is enough local tissue available. This can be done immediately, at the time of mastectomy, or weeks or even years later.
The second part of breast reconstruction is creating the nipple. This is usually done after the breast has been reshaped, and usually involves a local tissue flap to build the nipple and a free graft of skin or areolar from the other breast, or a medical grade tattoo to replace the areola.
Following reconstruction of one side breast lifting or reduction on the opposite side, to improve symmetry, is done usually, at the time of the 2nd stage nipple reconstruction.