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What to Expect With Any Surgery
Every surgery involves planning, preparation, risks, and recovery. On these pages, we provide the basics on what you’ll experience with any surgery – before, during, and after.
In this section:
- Planning for Surgery: Medical History and Testing
- The Day of Surgery
- What Happens in the Operating Room
- Recovering From Surgery
- Waiting for Results From Surgery
- Surgery Risks
- Myths About Surgery
- Dealing With Surgery Fears
- Questions to Ask Your Surgeon
Expert Quote
"Breast cancer surgery is not the radically deforming surgery that you may have seen in your grandmother's day. We do skin-sparing incisions, we try to make the incisions low enough that you can wear anything you want, we're not taking muscle out. You don't end up with a concave area where the ribs are showing and the scars run to the collarbone. It's a different era. I think the sooner you get back to seeing what your scar looks like the better off you are. I like to take a look at a patient's scar early in the healing process, to let her know that I think it looks okay."
-- Thomas G. Frazier, M.D.
