Clinical consultation

Please read this letter from Simon Cawthorn and respond if you are able.

Bristol Clinical |Commissioning Groups  suggested changes to commissioning

Breast  Reconstruction Surgery

 Would you as a patient be able to help give feed back  to Bristol CCG- like many CCG's they want to ration breast reconstruction- they want to limit the number of operations on the breast with disease to 3 in total which must be completed in 5 years from diagnosis. I don't have a problem with that - but they want to block all surgery to the unaffected breast.

We need to accept the surgery to reconstruct the breast cancer be done in 3 operations- women don't want endless revisions and it is right that we deliver good results "getting it right first time" -so we should support that - the main controversy is their suggestion to not pay for surgery to the opposite breast.

Ladies with larger breasts can now avoid mastectomies by having the new approach of removing up to 1/3 or More of the breast and using the advanced techniques of reconstruction to create a smaller breast -  the result of asymmetry of a cup size or more is unacceptable for patients and we should be able to offer balancing surgery to the opposite breast to match-

Also when mastectomy is the only option for the larger breasted ladies it costs more, is more difficult and honestly it not what the patients want, to rebuild the breast to its original large size such as a f or g cup size and trying to match the unaffected side -  it's much better to reconstruct to a smaller size and to reduce the large opposite breast.

Please would you consider helping by giving feed-back to the ccg in Bristol?

They are asking for comments to be made to them before 14th August & it would be

great if you could contact the CCG  at [email protected]

or   you can use https://www.bristolccg.nhs.uk/get-involved/.

Thank you

Simon Cawthorn

Breast Surgeon And TRUSTEE  BUST

Bristol Breast Care Centre

Southmead

Any problem    - contact Jenny Wookey 07966 422486