Robert Whitfield MDAmerica's Breast Implant Illness Expert™

The Emotional Side of Breast Reconstruction, Explant and Recovery

30 Jul 2024 · 0 min

Watch on YouTube

0:25

A short excerpt from a YouTube video by Robert Whitfield MD in which he recounts a patient’s long arc: initial cancer diagnosis and treatments (chemotherapy and radiation) when she was young, and years later—when he was a plastic surgery resident in the same city—he performed her breast reconstruction using a non-implant procedure. The speaker emphasizes the emotional burden on a patient who experienced such treatments at age 24 and contrasts earlier and later conversations about reconstruction.

And then she went to other treatments. Chemotherapy, radiation therapy. And oddly enough, years later, when I was a plastic surgery resident in the same city, I did her breast reconstruction years later, not with an implant, but with another procedure. And very different conversations. By that time, you know, she's many years older, but has experienced so many more things that nobody should have to experience when they're 24.