Background: Breast hypertrophy is seen in clinical practice
to have various physical symptoms and signs on patients.
These symptoms vary in severity according to breast weight.
Symptoms may include back and neck pain, postural changes,
skin affection (intertrigo) and psychological affection in form
of depression, anxiety and low self-esteem.
Insufficient and contradictory data from previous studies
described the effects on chest wall dynamics, which guided
this study to furtherly investigate these changes and prove
the hypothesis of the relation between the resected breast
weight and the improved effect on lung functions. The aim
of this study is to evaluate and document this relation and
hypothesis by performing pulmonary function tests pre and
post operatively.
Methodology and Results: Twenty-five adult female
patients presenting with symptomatic macromastia were
included in the study. Paired t-test showed significant change
in some spirometric parameters (FVC, FVC%, B/P, FEV1,
FEV1, %B/P) after reduction mammoplasty. Spearman correlation
coefficient discovered a significant positive correlation
between the total weight of breast tissue resected and pulmonary
functions, and a non-significant correlation between the
age, BMI and the pulmonary functions.
Conclusion: In conclusion, this study has documented
the restrictive effects on chest wall compliance caused by
macromastia. Statistically significant improvement in preand
post-operative pulmonary functions was documented.
The correlation between the resected breast weight and pulmonary
function tests improvement, proved to be linear