There are many ways to reconstruct the breast following mastectomy. One way to reconstruct the breast which lasts the lifetime of the patient is the deep inferior epigastric artery perforator (DIEP) flap. In DIEP flap breast reconstruction, the skin and fat from the abdomen is harvested along with the deep inferior epigastric artery and vein and transferred to the chest with an anastomosis to the recipient internal mammary vessels.
The photograph demonstrates before and after bilateral DIEP flap breast reconstruction. The DIEP flaps reconstruction occurred at the time of the bilateral mastectomy procedure.
