Acellular Dermal Matrix (ADM) with your mastecomy reconstruction
Anyone use Acellular Dermal Matrix (ADM) with your mastecomy reconstruction. Can you tell me about it - good/bad? Have you decided against it? I ask because I met with my reconstructive surgeon today, and he suggested it for my skin sparring double mastectomy. Somehow, I hadn't heard of this in all my reading and prep.
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I have ADM for my pre-pectoral (over the muscle) breast reconstruction after my bilateral skin sparing mastectomy. The ADM acts as a scaffold to hold the implants in place when they are placed in the pre-pectoral position. Otherwise, the implants have no support and will migrate. I never gave ADM a second thought. Is there something that is worrying you about ADM?
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I guess when I heard where they came from (cadevers) I was a bit nervous and in my research, I never came across this. I didn't know it would/could be a part of the process, which is one more thing I didn't know and am now thinking about.
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I view it as I would organ donation. If I needed an organ I know that most of the time that comes from a person who passed away. And I am grateful that there are people willing to donate to help others.
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I had my bmx 12 years ago with Alloderm*,which is a brand of ADM. It creates a nice internal sling (guards against your implants bottoming out) and I’ve had no problems. Come to think of it , I don’t recall anyone who mentioned that they had problems with it nor do I recall anyone opting out. It is also extremely common and has been used for many, many years. What are your concerns?
*Alloderm is a very common brand. Search on bco under that term or even Google the term and you may find more info.
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exbrnxgrl - I don't have big concerns. Just never heard of it before and wanted to hear from others about it. I am going to use it. Just in my research, it didn't come up.
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nilespark,
Rest assured, its use is common. I had very little knowledge about bc and recon prior to my own experience but I didn’t realize how little I actually knew. It’s a lot to take in at the beginning and so much more complicated than I imagined. Take care
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I hadn't heard of it either before I woke up with it underneath the tissue expander in my removed R breast. My L breast had been converted from subpec implant due to old mast to a prepec, & if there's ADM in there I didn't feel it.
Has anyone felt it during the tissue expansion process or after the exchange? The weirdest thing to me is there's a big lump in exactly the place my tumor was (I have lobular so that's how I found it) and lumps on the side into my armpit that frankly make it hard to know whether i might have an enlarged lymph node. It may be turning into the cording that can happen w/ a lymph node biopsy.
As with this whole process, I just wish a PS or PA would take the time to inform me up front of what I can expect—the likely pain, where stitches are (so I can understand why I woke up screaming b/c of what felt like barbed wire underneath my skin), whether they'll dissolve, and what the ADM should feel like. They have failed to inform me what "normal" is, so that I never know whether to report something and women patients are once again put in the position of seeming to question, worry, and complain, when simple information up front would suffice.Basically, on a larger level there are some simple ways that breast reconstruction's "standard of care" could be improved that would greatly improve patients' quality of life and even reduce the number of surgeries required. I've been reviewing the peer reviewed lit and have realized that this field is largely, unintentionally putting preventable burdens on women patients—the solutions to which would improve the workload overall for PS. I'll start on OP on it in a few days.
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