Prospective Pilot Study of Robot-assisted Nipple Sparing Mastectomy (RNSM)

With the advances of breast reconstruction after mastectomy for the treatment of breast diseases including breast cancer, surgical techniques have evolved to preserve the skin flaps and nipple areolar complex (NAC) to give better aesthetic outcome without compromising outcome. Mastectomy that preserves the NAC is called nipple sparing mastectomy (NSM). NSM can provide major psychosocial benefits for patients but is technically demanding and challenging to perform. Total mammary glandular excision in NSM can be technically challenging due to small size of the incision and poor visualization of dissection plane. Recent studies demonstrate feasibility and safety of performing minimally invasive robot-assisted NSM (RNSM). The technique of RNSM is still novel. This is a single-arm pilot study for feasibility and safety of RNSM.