Over a dozen women benefit from breast reduction surgeries |23 May 2015

Seventeen women with excessively large and heavy breasts have benefited from breast reduction surgeries conducted by three plastic surgeons, an anesthetist and a nurse anesthetist from Germany under a programme of the Health Care Agency (HCA) of the Ministry of Health.

Following the surgeries conducted at the Seychelles Hospital last week the women will now be able to experience great relief because for them large and heavy breasts, back, neck and shoulder pain was often a way of life.

Breast reduction surgery can alleviate pain and discomfort by creating smaller and lighter breasts that are in proportion with the body.

The consultant in charge of the Surgical Department, Dr Henry Telemaque told Seychelles Nation that they brought in the specialists to help them with these operations as the list of people waiting continues to get longer.

“This is not the first time that we’ve had specialists come to Seychelles to perform breast reduction surgeries,” said Dr Telemaque.

“We had a doctor from South Africa who used to come  here once every six months to take care of a few of our cases, but unfortunately he stopped coming to Seychelles about ten years ago,” Dr Telemaque pointed out.

Dr Telemaque noted that this is the first time they carry out so many surgeries in one go.

According to the doctor it takes a minimum of three hours to carry out one of these surgeries on a patient and it was hard to accommodate them with all the other cases which the hospital has to deal with.

“We were trying to find means of reducing the number of patients on the waiting list, so we contacted the doctor in Germany who came along with his team,” added Dr Telemaque.

When asked how they went about selecting the women to operate on, Dr Telemaque said that they chose according to the ones which had spent longer on the waiting list. But still he noted that some of them had been unreachable from the contact they gave.  

The healing process takes approximately six weeks, according to Dr Telemaque.

“However, with this type of surgery it usually takes up to six months or a year to get the true picture of the new breasts and their hospital stay is two or three days minimum,” he added.

Dr Telemaque said there is a possibility that the specialists may come back next year but in the meantime, the hospital is aiming to carry out one or two surgeries every month.