Options other than the DIEP flap for breast reconstruction are considered “secondary” choices, and with good reason. But for some women, these are the only choices. Well, in the chaos of trying to get everything sorted for the move back to Australia, the blog has been a little neglected. Questions have still be coming in though, and it seems that one area I haven’t discussed much is the use of so-called “secondary” or alternative flap options in women who aren’t candidates for a DIEP flap, and either choose not to have or cannot have (by virtue of radiotherapy or some other factor) implant reconstruction. If we consider how many of these alternative flaps are being done, they represent perhaps 10-15% of all reconstructions in a high-volume centre like St Thomas’ here in London (not long ago, I sat down and crunched the numbers for all of our breast reconstructions, looking at what flaps we were doing and our complication rates). In a typical Australian centre where a lower total number of breast reconstructions is being performed this has several implications: it means that because we do less of these alternative free flap reconstructions, we aren’t as “practiced” at doing them; … Continue reading The Breast Reconstruction Series #7: Alternative free-flap reconstructions