title: Pain after mastectomy and breast reconstruction.
abstract: Breast cancer is a potentially deadly disease affecting one in eight women. With the trend toward minimally invasive therapies for breast cancer, such as breast conserving therapies, sentinel node biopsies, and early treatments of radiation and chemotherapy, life expectancy after breast cancer has increased. However, pain after breast cancer surgery is a major problem and women undergoing mastectomy and breast reconstruction experience postoperative pain syndromes in approximately one-half of all cases. Patients post mastectomy and breast reconstruction can suffer from acute nociceptive pain and chronic neuropathic pain syndromes. Several preventative measures to control acute post operative pain and chronic pain states such as post mastectomy pain and phantom pain have been tried. This review focuses on the recent research done to control acute and chronic pain in patients receiving minimally invasive therapies for breast cancer, such as breast conserving therapies of mastectomies and breast reconstruction, sentinel node biopsies, and early treatments of radiation and chemotherapy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anesthesiology and Plastic Surgery, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06510, USA. nalini.vadivelu@yale.edu
authors.forename: Nalini
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Vadivelu
authors.forename: Maggie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schreck
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lopez
authors.forename: Gopal
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kodumudi
authors.forename: Deepak
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Narayan
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016462:Mammaplasty / Q000009:adverse effects*; D008408:Mastectomy / Q000009:adverse effects*; D010149:Postoperative Pain / Q000209:etiology* / Q000628:therapy*