Can I have laser lipo treatment after breast cancer removal?

Sarahoh, Your body is going through a lot with the cancer treatment. Your recent cancer tumor removal and pending radiation treatment will put stress on your body. I would recommend you wait until you have finished your treatments and then fully recover for a year or two before having liposuction. Wishing you the best of health.

I always tell my patients, that life and normal. Life is more important than any surgical procedure, especially an anesthetic one. If you were someone who was completely free of cancer, I would say, absolutely, have any surgical procedure you desire as long as it makes you feel better. On the other hand when you have an active cancer, or you may have active cancer in your body, I would not recommend having any surgical procedure done because it may result in further spread of cancer. I hope this helps and good luck from New York City Plastic Surgery. Happy and healthy new year.

I recognize one patient choose to have a lump ectomy with radiation. They typically aren’t thinking in terms of needing plastic surgery breast reconstruction.
Patient with breast Cancer, history should always be cognizant of the potential future need for reconstructive options.
Should the irradiated breast become disfigured? You may need to have surgical options and a radiated tissue do not tolerate procedures that non-radiated tissues can tolerate.
Every once in a while, some patients will have such disfigurement from lumpectomy and radiation that they end up converting to a mastectomy.
Likewise, if there is a cancer recurrence, then the patient typically will do mastectomy.
Anytime there’s been radiation implant reconstruction will not be a viable option and for those patients autologous tissue reconstruction is the gold standard.
The most common procedure is a TRAM flap type reconstruction.
This means that the skin and fat from the lower abdomen is needed to make the new breast. While we certainly hope you will not ever need to have those type of procedures it is important to recognize that some patients do end up going down that road and if they had previous Liposuction, the reconstructive options will now have been severely limited.
Any plastic surgeon you consult with should from an ethical perspective always consider all breast reconstructive options before guiding you towards cosmetic surgery.
Consider talking to plastic surgeons who do reconstructive surgery to become familiarized with a different options and get their input in regards to the appropriateness of having Liposuction.
Whenever somebody’s considering liposuction of the back or abdomen or having a tummy tuck with a history of breast cancer, we should always step back and look at what future needs may be to take care of issues, more important than having a slightly slimmer midsection.
Best,
Mats Hagstrom, MD