We are proud and grateful to announce that the Plastic Surgery Foundation selected BreastReconstruction.org’s Breast Reconstruction Timeline Series as a 2024 Breast Reconstruction Awareness Grant Winner! This project marks our second PSF Grant funded initiative. Your Voice, Your Choice, a video series that offers a window into what the breast reconstruction decision-making process can look like was brought to you in part by a PSF 2022 Breast Reconstruction Awareness Grant.
The Breast Reconstruction Timeline Series is a vital site section that illuminates breast reconstruction’s inherently staged progression. Breast Reconstruction is nearly always a staged process that involves multiple procedures. Current breast reconstruction education resources offer—at best—before and after photos of patients who have undergone a given type of reconstructive surgery. Those images, which show only the very beginning and the finished reconstruction, miss a swath of stages in between. This represents a clear gap in available patient education resources. Staged procedures are often difficult to understand and visualize, which only elevates the need for clear illustration.
The Timeline Series consists of a series of detailed patient timelines that include images and descriptions of every stage of the process. A preview of this new section is currently available here—this generous funding will help us enhance the volume and variety of cases. Each timeline starts with a general overview of the case (e.g. the type of reconstruction, timing of the procedures, and the total number of stages involved). Each timeline point features a carousel of up to five photos of that stage, along with a brief description of what site visitors are seeing and its timing. This combination of visual and plain-language explanation offers visitors a firm and realistic understanding of what each type of reconstruction entails, start-to-finish.
We want to extend an enormous thank you to the PSF for supporting this project. We look forward to building a more robust section that truly illustrates the individual nature of breast reconstruction. Whether you are considering your options or already in the process of undergoing breast reconstruction, we hope these timelines help you make informed choices, plan your surgeries and lives accordingly around those choices, manage expectations, and more.
***Breast Reconstruction Timeline entries are reviewed by our Board of Directors on a quarterly basis. If you are a physician who is interested in submitting a case for review, please email Michelle@breastreconstruction.org.
