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Dr. Terry Myckatyn of West County Plastic Surgeons Contributes to a Published Study

Dr. Terry Myckatyn regularly sees women facing two sets of surgeries: one to remove breast cancer or the risk of breast cancer, and one to subsequently reconstruct the breasts. As a plastic surgeon serving St. Louis, his focus is on the reconstruction phase, helping women to navigate their options and choose the method most likely to give them the aesthetic results they’re seeking.

Dr. Myckatyn is not alone in this endeavor. At the tail end of March, he joined four other doctors in publishing the results of a study: “Patient-Reported Outcomes of Aesthetics and Satisfaction in Immediate Breast Reconstruction After Nipple-Sparing Mastectomy With Implants.”

This study compared satisfaction rates for two types of patients: those who underwent direct-to-implant reconstruction and those who underwent tissue expander/implant reconstruction, both after a nipple-sparing mastectomy.

The study involved 59 patients (41 with direct-to-implant and 18 with tissue expander/implant), who collectively underwent 113 reconstruction surgeries.

The results indicated that both reconstructive options carried comparable rates of patient satisfaction in terms of aesthetics, along with two further discoveries of note: Women who underwent tissue expander/implant reconstruction ended up with significantly larger implants on the whole, and these same patients who also augmented their surgical results with fat grafting showed significantly higher satisfaction rates.

The study authors—which also included Dr. Marissa Tenenbaum, also of West County Plastic Surgeons, and Drs. AA Qureshi, EB Odom, and RP Parikh—concluded that women seeking tissue expander/implant reconstruction after a nipple-sparing mastectomy may need larger implants to achieve satisfaction similar to that experienced by direct-to-implant reconstruction patients with smaller implants. They also theorized that the two types of reconstructive surgeries may generate differing aesthetic expectations, which makes plastic surgeon-patient conversations about the options and the expected results essential.

For more information about this study, breast reconstruction, and West County Plastic Surgeons in St. Louis in general, call 314-996-8800 or send a message online.