Post Mastectomy Wound Complications with or Without Neo-Adjuvant Chemotherapy: An Observational Study

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in women and the second most common cause
of death from cancer among women in the world. Diagnosis is usually made by the clinical examination, USG
Breast & mammography, and confirmed by FNAC, true cut biopsy, and incision biopsy.
Materials and Methods: The study was an observational study which was carried out at tertiary care Medical
Centre (BMCH) Day today patient admitted in Department of Surgery with a breast lump and was diagnosed as
breast carcinoma, took neoadjuvant chemotherapy or not and operated. The present study was done to observe
the incidence of wound complications after mastectomy following neoadjuvant chemotherapy within 6 weeks
and to compare the incidence of wound complications that occurs after breast surgeries following neo adjuvant
chemotherapy with the same without neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
Results: The mean age of this study population was 50.8 yrs. Histological type distribution showed that invasive
ductal carcinoma consists of 64 patients (80%). Histological grade distribution showed that most of the patients
were Grade 2 (76.25%). Most of the patients had undergone modified radical mastectomy. About 77 (96.25%)
patients underwent a modified radical mastectomy of which 36 (46.73%) took neoadjuvant chemotherapy and
41 (53.24%) were not taken neoadjuvant chemotherapy. In our study, we found that among the 36 patients who
received neoadjuvant chemotherapy 27 patients (75%) developed complications after surgery whereas it was
much lesser in patients without neoadjuvant chemotherapy which was 21 among 44 patients (47.7%). It has been
found that the chance of complications is slightly more in the case of neoadjuvant chemotherapy patients.
Conclusion: It was concluded that post-operative complications of MRM included wound dehiscence, seroma,
surgical site infection, hematoma, altered sensation, and pain. Seroma formation is the most frequent and common
complication after mastectomy. The present study showed that the rate of wound complications after mastectomy
was slightly high in the case of patients taking neo adjuvant chemotherapy.