'Love Handles', Cancer Struck Bosom

By Suparna Chakaraborthy

Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 13:15

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researchers have found a new technique for reconstructing the shape of the breast after mastectomy. Mastectomy is the surgical removal of a cancer infected breast.

The researchers claim that tissue from those below-the-waist “love handles" improves cosmetic breast reconstruction in slim, athletic cancer patients without adequate fat sources elsewhere.

The researchers came up with this solution after an experience from their work on cadavers and on 12 breast cancer patients over the course of a year.

“When implants aren"t used, the most common technique for reconstructing breasts after a mastectomy is to make breast tissue from a flap of fat and skin from the abdominal region. Thin, athletic women don"t have enough tissue there. But even they often have some excess fatty tissue in that space between the hip and waist. For them, using those love handles is a new option," says Ariel N. Rad, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of cosmetic surgery and plastic and reconstructive surgery

They also claim that the same technique can also be applied to women after tummy tucks. Generally a flap of skin and fat from the buttocks were used but his mostly lead to deformed buttock shape and then an operation.

Rad and his colleagues came up with the idea of using the love handles when they noticed a blood vessel underneath the buttocks while doing an SGAP procedure. The technique was found but the question was whether the blood vessels can be found in all the patients. Dissecting cadavers and using CT scanning, the team determined the vessel was available in 60 percent of patients.

That made the new surgery less complicated to perform, Rad says," All 12 of the patients in the study had successful breast reconstruction using the new version of the SGAP, known as the LSGAP (lateral septocutaneous perforating branches of the superior gluteal artery).