The effect of body mass index (BMI) on breast reduction surgery

Abstract

Background & Aim: breast reduction is one of the most common plastic surgeries done worldwide, and it is effective in treating breast hypertrophy symptoms, but as every other surgical procedure it has complications which are known to be related to patient obesity and other factors like smoking and hypertension.

This fact turns some surgeons even to refuse to make surgery on obese patients in a fear of complications without any real evidence of obesity raising the complication rate.

In this study we tried to clarify the impact of obesity represented by body mass index (BMI) and the weight of breast tissue resected on breast reduction complications rate.

Methods and materials: 32 patients who underwent breast reduction surgery were studied at almowassat university hospital in Damascus , preoperatively we recorded age , weight, habituals, and other demographic information of every patient.

All surgeries were done by the same breast reduction technique which is inferior pedicle inverted T scar technique.

We also recorded the weight of breast tissue resected and every complication that happened after the procedure (mean follow up period 1 year).

We evaluate the impact of obesity (represented by BMI) and the wight of breast tissue resected on complication rate by double handed t test analyzation to see any statistical importance.

Results:32 patients under went breast reduction with inferior pedicle wise pattern scar technique, mean age was 37,8 years, mean BMI was 27,9 kg/m² and the mean wight resected of breast tissue was 793g.

Complications happened in 14 patients of 32 with statistical difference in breast weight resected between patients with complications and patients without, and no difference between them in BMI values.

Conclusion: this study concluded that patients weight measured by BMI does not affect the rate of complications after breast reduction surgery, whereas the weight of breast tissue resected from every breast statistically raise complication rate whenever it was bigger in breast reduction surgery.