31/07/2026
How do you feel about this? I'd love to hear.
Many studies show that breast reconstruction improves breast-cancer patients’ overall mental health. Yet many patients say they felt underprepared by their doctors for the length and intensity of the breast-reconstruction process. Up to 40 percent of women who undergo breast reconstruction end up dissatisfied with the results.
“To me, the risk of a complication is the Achilles’ heel of breast reconstruction. It’s a really important operation. It has the potential to restore quality of life,” said Dr. Clara Lee, a plastic surgeon and professor. “But there’s this relatively high complication risk.” For some women with breast cancer, that complication risk means undergoing multiple unplanned surgeries in pursuit of rebuilding the breasts they lost to cancer. And even if everything goes well, with minimal or even zero complications, almost all breast reconstructions will involve multiple “revision” operations.
What drives some women to persist through so many years of so many surgeries? It’s difficult to understand unless you’re in it, and many of the women Melissa Dahl spoke to found it hard to articulate. “Where it gets hard,” said Dr. Monique C. James, a psychiatrist who works with patients undergoing mastectomy and reconstruction, “is when people have assigned meanings to their breasts that connect to their identity.” She starts her relationship with her patients by asking each one the same question: “What do your breasts mean to you?” Just like breast reconstruction, the question is often more complicated than it seems.
Dahl reports on the complication-riddled process of breast reconstruction: https://nymag.visitlink.me/pcEAWK
