ARTICLE SUMMARY:
A UK-based start-up’s thermal solution for breast surgery complications puts patients’ comfort and dignity front and center.
Saahil Mehta, MD is a plastic surgeon trained at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, specializing in the prevention of wound healing complications for breast reconstruction patients. Up to 30% of all breast reconstruction surgeries result in skin issues including necrosis, leaving 1 in 5 patients in need of a second surgery. Describing the quality of life of patients with such complications, Mehta says, “They need more dressing changes et cetera to deal with a problematic wound that has a huge impact on patients’ social and working lives and on the hospital economically.” One of the greatest impedances of surgical wound healing issues is the delay caused to adjuvant chemo or radiotherapy since wounds must be completely healed before starting a course of either, bearing a negative effect on survival.
In 2009, Mehta worked with a plastic surgeon doing skin-saving mastectomy, a new procedure at the time that allowed patients to have reconstructions with minimal aesthetic impact by cutting around the nipple and removing tumors while leaving behind a skin envelope that could then be filled with autologous tissue or an implant. Because the thin skin of the breast has a relatively poor blood supply, it is particularly prone to necrosis and infection, and the surgeon with whom Mehta was working introduced him to the concept of supraphysiological preconditioning, a purely academic concept with no clinical practice up to that point.
