SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) - It's being touted as the final frontier of breast reconstruction.
Sutter Health's Dr. Anne Peled is trained as both a plastic surgeon and a breast cancer surgeon.
After her own battle with breast cancer, she created a new sensation-preserving technique that's helping mastectomy patients feel more like themselves.
“I was like what? How is this real? It was such a gift,” Sarafina Nance said.
Sarafina Nance is an astrophysics Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley.
When she's not studying or floating in zero gravity, she's raising awareness on social media about genetic testing and mastectomies.
“I have a Ph.D. background in science and I struggled to find information that was accessible that I could understand and then use it to inform my decision,” Nance said.
Sarafina was just 23-years-old when she found out she carried the BRCA2 gene mutation, leaving her with a very high risk of developing breast cancer.
“I was scared, I was angry I think, but once I made the decision to be proactive about it, all of those fell to the background,” Nance said.
She eventually decided to have a double mastectomy with reconstruction but finding out traditional mastectomies leave patients with near-complete numbness in their chest was surprising and unfortunately, the standard.
“Almost everyone you talk to is numb after traditional mastectomy,” Dr. Anne Peled said.
Dr. Peled is both a plastics and breast cancer surgeon at Sutter CPMC's Breast Health Center.
After her own battle with breast cancer four years ago, she and her nerve surgeon husband created a sensation-preserving technique for mastectomies.
“Sensation matters for many different reasons, you can get burned, people can have chronic pain if they have nerve injuries,” Dr. Peled said.
Dr. Peled says new technology has helped them create the trailblazing technique.
“We have nerve grafts we can use, better implant technology, better mastectomy technology,” Dr. Peled said.
Young women speaking up about the importance of sensation has helped push more surgeons to learn how to do it.
On Wednesday, Dr. Peled took part in one of Sutter's virtual grand rounds, a meeting where surgeons can share new techniques.
Currently, there are less than 10 surgical teams across the country performing it routinely.
“We have the highest number of patients and the longest outcomes in terms of follow-up of anyone across the country so far, there certainly are more teams coming,” Dr. Peled said.
More than 150 patients have received the sensation performing mastectomy at Sutter and 85 to 90% of them say their feeling is back to their baseline -- Sarafina is one of them.
Not only does she feel more confident in her body, but she's also reduced her risk of breast cancer from 87% to less than 5%.
“I think having that sensation allowed the healing process to go far more smoothly. I was able to be in touch with my body and understand what was happening, understand the trauma it had gone through,” Nance said.
Sarafina says she'll continue to share her story as a way to educate more women about their options.
“It's not the best decision for everybody but for me it was. If I just impact one person that is incredibly powerful,” Nance said.
from KRON4 https://ift.tt/31aTFLt
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