Breast Reconstruction Thessaloniki

In a DIEP flap, fat, skin, and blood vessels are cut from the wall of the lower belly and moved up to your chest to rebuild your breast. (In a properly performed DIEP, no muscle is cut or removed; if you’re having DIEP flap, make sure this will be the case.) Your surgeon carefully reattaches the blood vessels of the flap to blood vessels in your chest using microsurgery. Because no muscle is used, most women recover more quickly and have a lower risk of losing abdominal muscle strength with a DIEP flap compared to any of the TRAM flap procedures.Tissue can be taken from your belly for breast reconstruction only once. So if you're thinking about prophylactic removal and reconstruction of the other breast, you might want to make that decision before you decide on reconstruction. If you have DIEP flap reconstruction on one breast and then later need reconstruction on your other breast, tissue for the second, later reconstruction will have to come from your buttocks or back. Or you can have reconstruction with an implant. Because skin, fat, and blood vessels are moved from the belly to the chest, having a DIEP flap means your belly will be flatter and tighter -- as if you had a tummy tuck. Still, a DIEP flap does leave a long horizontal scar -- from hipbone to hipbone -- about one-third of the way between the top of your pubic hair and your navel. In most cases, the scar is below your bikini line. After the skin and fat are removed from your belly, the abdomen is closed. No mesh material is required to support the abdominal wall, as may be the case with a TRAM flap. Your navel is then brought back out through a separate incision and reshaped.