Reconstructive options following mastectomy.

Reconstructive breast surgery is an option a woman may choose following breast loss due to disease, trauma, or congenital malformation. In choosing breast reconstruction a woman must decide on timing and type of procedure. Recent decisions by the Food and Drug Administration have severely limited the type of reconstructive procedure that can be performed. This article discusses all of the options recently available in order to give information to those treating patients who have had these procedures as well as to be encyclopedic in the event that these techniques become available again.