Will my nipples lose sensation after breast surgery?

One of the most common questions women have about breast surgery is whether they will lose their nipples. sensation.

The answer varies widely, depending on the type of procedure you have. For mastectomies and breast reconstruction, it is very likely that sensitivity will be lost. But with breast augmentation, loss of sensitivity is much less likely.

To better understand how these surgeries can affect you, let’s take a closer look at how your nipples work.

Complex Neural Array

Some parts of our body have more nerve endings than others. For example, we have an extremely high concentration of nerve endings in our fingertips, lips and tongue. Your nipples and areolas don’t have that many, but there are hundreds of nerve endings located in this area, which makes them extremely sensitive to touch and sexual stimulation.

This complex series of nerves travels out of the chest wall and through your breast tissue – following patterns that differ from person to person – before ending up in the areola and areola. This makes it difficult to isolate and protect these nerves during any procedure that involves substantial removal of tissue from the breast. It is inevitable that these nerve endings will be cut during a mastectomy.

Fortunately, progress has been made in developing procedures capable of restoring at least some of this lost sensation. Traditionally, doctors have focused on restoring breast shape – without sensation or function. Breastfeeding function will not recover after a mastectomy, but restoration of sensitivity is important for many women. The process, called breast neuroticism, is becoming more common. It’s a new frontier that offers hope to patients in recovery as more insurance companies embrace it.

Breast cancer surgeries

Surgery to treat breast cancer represents the most significant threat to nipple sensation. During a mastectomy, the nipple and areola are often removed during the procedure. But during one lumpectomy (also known as breast conserving surgery), your surgeon removes only the tumor and some of the surrounding healthy tissue. There is a much better chance of maintaining sensitivity, depending on the size of the tumor and its location. Numbness in part of the breast is not unusual, but often the feeling returns, at least partially, over time.

For some women, a nipple-sparing mastectomy it is a choice. With this procedure, the areola and areola are left intact, along with the skin of the breast, and are checked for cancer. If no cancer is found, the areola and areola are included in the subsequent breast reconstruction.

The procedure may be an option for patients who do not have these characteristics:

• Multiple tumors in the same breast quadrant
• Multiple tumors, but spread to several quadrants of the breast
• Infiltrating tumors and large areas of ductal carcinoma in situ, a condition affecting the cells of the milk ducts
• The largest tumor is 3 cm
• The tumor is located less than 2 cm from the nipple/areola

Even with this procedure, total loss of nipple sensation can occur due to the number of nerves that have been severed. While some women experience a gradual return of some sensation over time (nerves tend to heal very slowly), loss of sensation is expected after mastectomy.

Breast augmentation, lifting and reduction

The results are quite different with the breast increase procedures. In general, loss of nipple sensitivity occurs in about 10 percent of these surgeries. Risk can be modified by several factors:

• Implant Size: Larger implants are more likely to stretch the tissue and associated nerves connected to the nipples.
• Cut position: The most common incision sites are the fold under the breast, around the areola or the armpit area. Not surprisingly, cuts around the areola are more likely to contribute to loss of sensitivity.
• Implant placement: The best results, in terms of lost sensitivity, occur when the implant is placed behind the pectoral muscle.

With breast reductions and lifts, much depends on the amount of tissue removed. It is common to experience significant loss of nipple sensation after these procedures. Only about 10 percent of women regain sensitivity over the next six to 12 months.

For cosmetic procedures, this is an important element of preoperative counseling. If it’s something you’re considering, you should know that there’s at least some risk of losing all or part of the feeling in your nipples.