Aira Hospital

That cancer diseases are rare in African countries is a wide spread misunderstanding. Among those cancer diseases we see most common in this country is breast cancer. Unfortunately the patients often come too late to have radical surgery, sometimes even too late to have anything done for them.

 

Even if there is no chance of a radical cure we often do a simple mastectomy (removal of the breast) as a palliative measure to give relief of local pain, ulceration and infection. Death from distant metastasis is less agonizing. Not even one of all the women which have undergone mastectomy in our hospital has shown any signs of regret or depression of losing the breast. No need of crisis therapy here!

 

Often it is necessary to remove so much tissue that the skin cannot be closed with a simple suture line. The defect has to be covered with a free skin graft. To expand the skin graft so that it will cover a larger area, and also to allow blood and secretions to escape easily, the skin graft is meshed (perforated with a meshing machine).

Woman with advanced breast cancer	On the operating table
Large defect after removal of the breast	Skin is being harvested with a dermatome
The dermatome functions manually	Skin is harvested
Skin in meshing machine	Skin being perforated in meshing machine
Meshed skin graft	Skin graft in place covered with Vaseline gauze
Skin graft has taken well	Wound covered with growing skin graft

 

Not many laymen are aware of the fact that men can have cancer of the breast as well as women.