Women with advanced breast cancer many times will have to go through what is called a radical mastectomy.  It is called a radical mastectomy, because it is, by medical and personal standards, considered a somewhat radical procedure that removes large amounts of your body and also because it radically alters one’s anatomy and is considered a highly invasive procedure.  Not only invasive physcially, but also emotionally many times. 

Some women, in fact most, report feeling less feminine, like a part of them is missing and gone forever that has made them what they are : a woman, a part of their body they’ve enjoyed throughout their whole lives and their husband has as well is suddenly taken from them in what seems like a cruel twist of fate. Some choose to have reconstructive surgery, some women may choose, based on cost or personal preference to simply wear a type of false prosthetic. 

In older mastectomies, many time all the lymph nodes were removed as well from underneath the underarms, but this is not always the case today, where advanced methods of breast removal are available that are a little less invasive and much less scarring.  However, depending on the situation and the advancement of the breast cancer, a surgeon may still choose to remove all these lymph nodes, especially if they are invaded with cancer. 

Most times mastectomies are performed when cancer is found in more than one area of the breasts, and lumpectomies or more localized removal of affected tissue is feared to not get all of the cancer that it needs to.  In earlier times, radical mastectomies were more the norm, no matter what the advancement of the cancer, and reconstructive options were almost nonexistent, but with today’s advanced methods of plastic and reconstructive surgery, it is possible to reconstruct something the is much closer to the woman’s original breasts and also do it for a lesser price since plastic surgery prices have somewhat come down in favor of newer, more cutting edge methods (which of course always bump the older methods down in price). 

This entry was posted on July 6, 2007 at 11:09 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Breast Cancer Prevention by Breast News Girl No Comments Yet