Breast surgery can be defined in two broad categories:
- • Procedures to diagnose and treat breast disease includ- ing cancer and benign cysts, tumors, and growths
- • Procedures to change the appearance of a breast, including restoring the absence of a breast, increase or decrease in breast size, or revision of breast shape and position Recently, however, a third category of breast surgery has emerged: surgery to prevent breast disease. While prophylactic bilateral mastectomy has been elected as early as the 1980s to significantly reduce a woman’s chances for developing breast cancer, it only recently has become an accepted practice in the prevention of breast disease in women who are carriers of the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. Studies show that there is a 90% reduction in the incidence of breast can- cer among these women. However, recent studies have demonstrated that even women who are not carriers of the breast cancer gene can, in fact, reduce their chances of developing breast cancer.
Beyond the categories of breast surgery to either treat disease or change appearance, breast surgery can also be defined by medical specialty:
• General breast surgery: to diagnose and treat breast disease through the removal of the entire breast, or only of diseased tissue, tumors, or cysts
• Plastic surgery of the breast: any surgical procedure that changes or restores the appearance of the breast, including those procedures to treat and pre- vent breast disease that result in the change of breast appearance
Credits:
100 questions and answers about breast surgery / Joseph J. Disa, Marie Czenko Kuechel.— 1st ed. p. cm.
ISBN 0-7637-3041-6 (pbk.)
1. Breast—Surgery—Popular works. I. Title: One hundred questions and answers about breast
surgery. II. Kuechel, Marie Czenko. III. Title. RD539.8.D57 2006
618.1’9059—dc22
2005009008