Study Shows Lipofilling doesn’t increase risks of recurrent breast cancer
The huge issue of breast reconstructing of women that had a surgery in order to face breast cancer now seems to be treatable by means of a technique which is called Lipofilling (a fat injection technique). Now a new study claims that Lipofilling doesn’t seem to increase the risk for recurring cancer . The study was published in the February issue of the official journal of ASPS (American Society of Plastic Surgeons), Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery!
The lead author of the study, Dr. Steven Kronowitz (plastic surgeon at Kronowitz Plastic Surgery, Houston) claims: “Our controlled study shows that, used as part of breast reconstruction, lipofilling is a safe procedure that does not increase the risk of recurrent or new breast cancers”.
How was the study carried out? The research time took advantage of a plastic surgery database examining the data for 1000 mastectomies (total or partial) that were combined with reconstruction by means of Lipofilling. Like any other fat injection process lipofilling is gathering fat from a part of the body (belly, thighs etc) by means of liposuction and injects it in the breast area to improve the appearance of the recently treated breasts. For more information on Fat Injection click here.
The findings of the study were pretty interesting because it seems there were not increased rates of recurrence in the breast or in the surrounding area, when lipofilling was done. The rate without lipofilling was at 2.4% while the rate with lipofilling was at 1.3%. When checking the rate of recurrence in distant areas the rate with lipofilling was at 3.6% while it was at 2.4% for those that didn’t have lipofilling. Finally we need to highlight that in the cases where hormone therapy was received by women that had breast cancer surgery there is low but important increase in rates or recurrence when lipofilling was done (1.4% versus 0.5%).
Dr. Kronowitz concludes: “Our results provide new evidence that lipofilling, used as part of breast reconstruction, is a safe procedure that does not increase the risk of recurrent or new breast cancer after mastectomy”.