LES TECHNIQUES DE CHIRURGIE PLASTIQUE DU SEIN EN CARCINOLOGIE MAMMAIRE

Breast cancer surgery has traditionally always been performed by surgeons who have little knowledge of plastic surgery of the breast. But plastic surgery has a considerable part to play in the management of breast cancer, not only for the repair of the extensive radionecrotic ulcerations of the chest wall or for the treatment of local recurrences, but also for improving the results of radical tumorectomies performed as conservative treatment, and, above all, for alleviating the disastrous psychological effects of mutilation by offering a mammary reconstruction. The ever-growing concern for early diagnosis of microscopic cancers in lesions as difficult to monitor clinically as mastosis is leading more and more frequently to the need for surgical exploration, which, if it is to be effective, and if it is not to result in severe mutilation, can only be achieved by recourse to the principles of reduction mammoplasty. Nowadays, it is just as impossible for cancerologists to ignore the deleterious psychological effects of mutilation as for plastic surgeons to leave out of account the problems of cancer.