Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery
Women’s motives to opt for either implant or DIEP-flap breast reconstruction
Section snippets
Participants
Women who participated in a multicentre prospective follow-up questionnaire study on the psychological effects of different types of BR and who also consented to be interviewed were included. They had previously undergone mastectomy or were about to have therapeutic mastectomy for breast cancer (BC) or prophylactic mastectomy (PM) for a high-risk for developing BC. Exclusion criteria were previous BR and poor command of the Dutch language.
We used the method of purposive sampling, the most
Results
The interviews were planned on average 16.8 days (range 2–65 days) preoperatively and mean interview duration was 54 min (range 28–111 min).
Discussion
The main goal of the current study was to explore motives for choosing specific types of BR after therapeutic mastectomy as well as PM. Motives for choosing BR, in general, were consistent with previous findings.16, 19, 20 The most mentioned reasons to choose BR were feeling too young to live without breasts, wanting to avoid an external prosthesis and wishing to feel feminine and self-confident. Regarding the decision-making process of the specific type of BR, it remains difficult to
Acknowledgements
We thank all participants, the plastic surgeons G. K. van Drunen, J. F. A. van der Werff, J. Zguricas, N. A. S. Posch and M. J. I. Braam, their personal assistants S. M. van der Kroft-Mieog, I. Velders and E. Alblas-Groeneveld and nurse practitioner E. M. M. Krol-Warmerdam for referring potential candidates for the study to us.
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