Operative Strategies in Breast plastic surgery

Writing a book like this is a complicated task, subtracting time from leisure, family and work... but it is a stimulating challenge forcing the Author to critically review his own practice. The most difficult aspect of it is defeating the temptation to make a parade of all the "best cases". The aim of a book like this , in fact, is to be helpful to the Reader, and not to be rewarding for the Author. This is the reason why unsatisfactory results and long-term unfavourable changes are reported and described whenever possible. The outcome of our surgical effort is rarely, if ever, stable in the long run, and I have tried to show as clearly as possible the changes that usually occur. This is useful in order to prevent unfavourable changes, when possible, and to give the patients complete and correct pre-operative information. I believe that an individualized selection of the procedures is often more important than a brilliant surgical performance. The specific indications for each procedure are therefore thoroughly discussed before entering the surgical details. The surgical techniques are illustrated by intra-operative pictures in a "step-by step" fashion. I intentionally avoided the use of drawings which can make some steps clearer but are always "artificial" and cannot truly represent the surgical field. Of course, this book does not intend to review the whole spectrum of surgical techniques. It represents a single surgeon's view: although obviously incomplete, it reports a homogeneous strategy to plastic surgery of the breast. In order to have different viewpoints, I asked Madeleine Lejour and Frank Elliott to critically comment each chapter. Madeleine and Frank honoured me by their enthusiastic participation: their comments add a lot of interest to this book and make it possible for the Reader to compare different approaches to the same problem.