New technique may help cancer victims regrow their breasts

MELBOURNE - Aussie scientists have developed a surgical technique that may allow women to regrow their breasts after undergoing mastectomies.

The experimental stem cell breast-growing technique, called Neopec, will allow breast cancer victims to re-grow breasts within six months - eliminating the need for implants or cosmetic surgery.

It would also eliminate the need for foreign bodies being inserted such as silicon implants.

The Melbourne-based Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery, which pioneered the procedure, could revolutionise the billion-dollar international cosmetic surgery industry by allowing women to grow their own bigger breasts naturally.

Five women will undergo the radical surgery within weeks ahead of a three-year-trial.

If successful, the procedure could become widely available to breast cancer patients.

The revolutionary technique relies on surgeons implanting a biodegradable synthetic breast-shaped chamber beneath the skin on a woman’s chest to act as a scaffold for the new breast to grow in.

They then redirect a blood vessel from the woman’s underarm through the chamber to a 5ml piece of the patient’s own fat, which spontaneously grows to fill a fist-sized space and forms a new breast over the next four to six months.

The fat tissue stops growing when it reaches the chamber to ensure the desired shape and size, while the chamber degrades after the breast is formed allowing for a simple one-operation process.

“We strongly believe that if this works this will replace silicone implants. It is a much better product because if you get fatter or thinner it does the same thing and it naturally forms as a natural breast implant,” the Daily Telegraph quoted Bernard O’Brien Institute director Professor Wayne Morrison as saying. (ANI)