A quick update on the 2023 American Society of Breast Surgeon’s conference which the NPOAS Board attended this past week in Boston, MA!
At the conference, we learned about sensation preserving mastectomies and that they are performed with aesthetic flat closure in addition to reconstructions. We also attended a talk by Flat Friendly Directory Surgeon Dr. Sharon Lum on “Unreconstructed Mastectomy” which featured NPOAS.
We actually met multiple surgeons who are using NPOAS as a resource to develop talks on aesthetic flat closure, which is fantastic and we encourage anyone and everyone to use our resources and information this way!
Surgeons were enthusiastic about the surgical photo database at AestheticFlatClosure.com which is filterable by characteristics like BMI, age, race, etc. and can be used by patients to see similar photos to their body type to see what they might be able to expect for their own flat closure. We hope to see the database populated soon!
We gave away 20 copies of Kat van Dam’s great technical guide to going flat, “Flat & Happy: Mastectomy and Flat Closure, a Personal & Practical Guide.” They went like hotcakes! We expect these to be included in the surgeon’s patient resource libraries, which will be very useful for their patients facing mastectomy. A few surgeons even mentioned that their patients had brought the book in to their consultations!
Notably, we are hearing more and more surgeons say that patients are coming in asking for aesthetic flat closure by name! The word is getting out!
“I think people who go flat have accepted the way that cancer has changed their bodies in a fundamental way and that leads to satisfaction with their decision.”
ASBRS Attendee
We signed up quite a few surgeons to receive brochures for their clinic and our newsletter, and we had lots of productive conversations about new resources to develop for both patients and surgeons.
All around, it was a successful conference and we look forward to attending again next year!