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CAMBRIDGE — A highly specialized breast reconstruction surgery that restores sensation in the woman’s tissue was recently done for the first time in Waterloo Region.

“It’s pretty exciting,” said Dr. Kathryn Sawa, a surgeon at Cambridge Memorial Hospital.

Sawa and a team of about 10 performed the surgery last week using the relatively new technique where nerves in the chest are connected with microsurgery to the abdominal tissue used to reconstruct the breast tissue removed due to cancer.

Traditionally, the abdominal flap technique restores the look of a breast, but feeling is lost in the area.

“We do a good job at recreating the breast shape. However, the reconstructed breast is numb,” Sawa said.

That numbness in their new breasts can be another blow for women who have already lost so much to cancer, not to mention a safety issue if they’re not able to feel sensations such as heat.

“That can be upsetting for patients,” Sawa said. “If they don’t have feeling to the breast, they feel less attached to it. It doesn’t feel like their own.”

During the surgery, Sawa wears special magnifying glasses to identify the nerves, which can be smaller than one millimetre. She’s already dissecting blood vessels in those tissue that will be connected as well during the reconstruction.

Then a surgical microscope is used to graft together the nerve endings with microsutures that are finer than hair.

The surgery takes eight to 12 hours, depending on the patient and if one or two breasts are being reconstructed.

This option is available to breast cancer patients who required a mastectomy or women with a genetically elevated risk who decided to have their breasts removed, although not everyone is a candidate.

There’s no guarantee feeling will be regained and it can take more than a year to know if the surgery was a success.

But Sawa said it’s great to be able to offer the possibility of a reconstructed breast with feeling to the breast cancer patients she sees every day.

“I bear witness to the toll treatment takes on my patients physically and emotionally.”

Sawa said it’s also a relief to patients to be able to get the surgical care they need close to home at Cambridge Memorial’s breast-reconstruction program rather than having to travel to a large centre.

“We’re doing some new things and they have a lot of options available.”

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