Mastectomized patients from Toledo ask that operating rooms be enabled to finish their treatment
Association for those affected by breast cancer Apacama warns from Toledo of the situation of mastectomy patients who have been waiting for up to three years to enter the operating room. Yours is not a matter of life or death, but an intervention that should not be delayed for more than 12 months to avoid complications. It is about the change of the expanders for the definitive prostheses, the last intervention to leave the reconstruction of the breasts in the absence of the nipples. However, the lack of operating rooms leaves these patients in limbo.
The Apacama association has filed complaints and signatures
Apacama has filed complaints and signatures without results. The patient Montse García-Rojas has filed three claims to have the expanders that were put in in 2020 removed. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in April of the year of the pandemic, so the lack of operating rooms forced this patient to start for chemotherapy. In December she finally faced the double mastectomy. She then put the expanders on her, annoying and painful prostheses, which take, according to Apacama, from 9 to 12 months. During this time, these temporary prostheses gradually inflate so that the skin and muscles give way for the permanent prostheses.
The problem is that every day there are more complaints that reach the association of women who have been with these expanders for two and up to three years without anyone giving them a date to change them for prostheses. What’s more, there is a case of a girl who, by spending more time than recommended, the surgery has been more complicated and she will have to go through the operating room again.
In addition to the complications and inconvenience caused by the expanders, Inés Manzanares, a member of Apacama, has insisted that “these women need to close the cycle.” “I need to turn the page,” García-Rojas also insists, that although she only has check-ups with her oncologist every six months, she still lives pending entering the operating room.
Those affected comment that the surgeons confess that there are no operating rooms, that the new Toledo University Hospital has more space, but still lacks equipment.
Breast reconstruction using expanders:
- It consists of the introduction of an empty implant in the bed of the mastectomy which will be subsequently filled over several weeks to ensure that the skin expands without damage.
- It is filled with saline that the surgeon injects into the expander in consultation.
- This type of reconstruction requires two interventions, the first to place the expander and the second to replace it with a definitive prosthesis. Between the first and the second surgery, at least three months must pass.
- Fuente: AECC.
