Breast reconstruction: Chemotherapy does not increase complications and patient-reported outcomes

Key clinical point: Chemotherapy is not associated with postmastectomy breast reconstruction surgical complications or with most surgery-related patient-reported outcomes.

Major finding: Compared with no chemotherapy, no difference was observed in the risk for any/major complication with either neoadjuvant (P = .68 and .46, respectively) or adjuvant (P = .15 and .053, respectively) chemotherapy in patients who received implant-based procedures. In patients who received autologous reconstruction, the risk for 2-year postoperative any/major complication was similar with neoadjuvant (P = .25 and .11, respectively) and adjuvant (P = .44 and .40, respectively) chemotherapy vs no chemotherapy. There were no differences across the chemotherapy groups for most BREAST-Q subscales.

Study details: A multicenter cohort study of 1,881 women who underwent postmastectomy breast reconstruction and were followed up for 2 years.

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Disclosures: This study was supported by the National Cancer Institute. The authors did not report any conflicts of interest.

Source: Hart SE et al. JAMA Surg. 2021 Jun 23. doi: 10.1001/jamasurg.2021.2239.