Summary
Breast reconstruction has been shown to improve quality of life in women following
mastectomy for breast cancer. To date, there have been no published prospective reports
looking at the effect nationality has on patient quality of life following breast
reconstruction.
Women from the USA, Sweden and Canada were recruited prior to reconstruction and followed
prospectively for 1 year postoperatively. Thirteen centres with 24 plastic surgeons
were involved. Preoperatively and 1 year postoperatively, women completed the Short
Form-36 questionnaire. Data were analysed using t-tests and analysis of variance.
A total of 313 women were followed up. American women who had immediate expander/implant
surgery were compared with Swedish patients, whilst Americans who had undergone transverse
rectus abdominis myocutaneous (TRAM) flap reconstructions were compared with Canadians.
Women benefited from having breast reconstruction, but this improvement was not dependent
upon country of origin. Swedish women reported less improvement in one subscale, that
of general health, compared with American women (P=0.01). There were no cultural differences detected between Americans and Canadians.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 09, 2007
Accepted:
October 19,
2005
Received:
May 18,
2005
Footnotes
☆Work presented at the 12th Congress of The European Society of Surgical Oncology, Lille, France, April 2002.
Identification
Copyright
© 2007 British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
