Breast Reconstuction Complications

Specifics may vary from case to case and practice to practice, but all failures involve interruption of the blood supply. This can be caused from a clot forming at the arterial or venous anastomosis, or from a conformational change in the blood vessel which produces “kinking” and subsequent interruption of blood supply. Most surgical teams experience dramatically lower failure rates as their experience expands, and it can get very difficult to determine precise reasons for failure (and ways to prevent it) when failure is a very rare event, i.e., success rates of 98-99%, which is typical for experienced surgeons. The best teams will nonetheless strive, whenever they have a failure, to find some “take home message” which they can use to hopefully further minimize their failure rate.

Richard M. Kline Jr., M.D.