A 10-year experience with subcutaneous mastectomy

Subcutaneous mastectomy appears to remain a procedure of promise. This 10-year experience indicated that it is feasible in at least 80 per cent of selected patients to successfully remove the breast parenchyma and subsequently reconstruct the breast without serious complications. It is resonable to assume that as surgical technique and experience improve, the complication rate will diminish. Furthermore, it is essential that better breast implants be devised and developed in the future. This would clearly enhance all forms of cosmetic breast surgery. The use of subcutaneous mastectomy as a prophylactic cancer procedure will parellel the improvement of implant breast reconstruction. Whether subcutaneous mastectomy will measurably reduce the mortality rate of carcinoma of the breast will, of course, take a generation to determine. However, I have no doubts that is it as justifiable and valuable surgical tool in the treatment of breast disease. The concept of almost total breast biopsy has great merit in the discovery of occult carcinoma. Clearly, caution should be exercised in the selection of cases for this modality, and further study must be devoted to develop diagnostic guidelines of ever-increasing precision to determine which breasts are potentially malignant and should be afforded the procedure.