There’s a reason DIEP Flap is one of the most popular methods of breast reconstruction. It offers a natural appearance, long-lasting results, and uses your body’s own abdominal tissue and blood vessels to reconstruct your breast. And it does all this while preserving your abdominal muscles. This procedure also provides the added benefit of contouring the abdomen in the same way a tummy tuck does.
Deep Inferior Epigastric Perforator Flap
This technique uses excess fatty tissue from the lower abdomen to recreate a breast with your own living tissue, offering a natural appearance and feel.The transferred tissue is supplied by the deep inferior epigastric artery and vein. Using advanced microsurgical techniques, the small perforating blood vessels that travel through the abdominal musculature are meticulously dissected to preserve the underlying rectus abdominis muscles. The tissue and its blood supply are then transferred to the chest, where the vessels are precisely reconnected under the microscope to recipient vessels in the chest to reestablish the blood flow. By preserving the abdominal muscles, the DIEP flap is designed to minimize disruption to the abdominal wall while providing long lasting breast restoration that feels and looks like a natural breast.Because the donor tissue is harvested from the lower abdomen, the procedure can also refine abdominal contour by removing excess skin and fat, much like an abdominoplasty (tummy tuck). The incisions that are used in DIEP flap breast reconstruction mirror the incisions used in aesthetic plastic surgery procedures giving the dual benefit of breast restoration with your own living tissue and improvement of the abdominal contour.