I am an associate professor of surgery and I’m the chief of the breast service at Yale in New Haven.
So I came to work and study at the Paris Breast Center and clinic Bizet for a period of three months. And the reason I wanted to come was to learn more about oncoplastic surgery.
In the United States, our training is a little bit different and we don’t have as much training in plastic surgery as many of our European colleagues. So I wanted to come and work with Krishna Clough because he’s one of the pioneers of oncoplastic surgery.
And I wanted to spend some time in Paris getting to know him and working with him and getting some firsthand experience in oncoplastics. Ideally, the reason I wanted to come is to benefit my patients to give them better cosmetic outcomes after their lumpectomies and to be able to do more breast conserving surgery.
I think the two most useful techniques that I learned here was something called an advancement flap, where I learned how to undermine the skin and free the breast gland from the muscle to fill in a lumpectomy defect and really reshape the breast after lumpectomy. So there’s no deformity.
And the other technique that I learned about was something called a rotational glandular flap, where we recruit a little bit of breast tissue from a different place after a lumpectomy and use that to fill in a cavity or a hole to get the best cosmetic outcome.
