BACKGROUND

Breast reconstruction can improve the quality of patients' lives by restoring the breasts' natural appearance. Saline-based tissue expanders are associated with significant drawbacks. The current systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to reveal the usability, safety, and economic burden of AeroForm-based tissue expanders for breast reconstruction.

METHODS

An extensive systematic literature review was implemented from inception to 9 December 2021. All clinical studies that included women with breast cancer subjected to AeroForm-based tissue expansion for breast reconstruction were included in the study.

RESULTS

This systematic review included eleven articles consisting of 748 patients. There were 1220 reconstructed breasts in which 530 (43.44%) breasts were reconstructed using AeroForm devices. AeroForm-based tissue expanders were associated with shorter duration to complete breast expansion (MD-35.22; 95% -46.65, -23.78;P<0.001) and complete reconstruction (MD-30.511; 95% -54.659, -6.636;P=0.013). The overall satisfaction rate of the aesthetic results of the AeroForm expanders was 81.4% (95%CI; 60.3% to 92.6%,P=0.006) and 64.6% (95%CI; 53.8% to 74%,P=0.008) for patients and surgeons. Patients subjected to saline-based breast reconstruction were 1.17 times at high risk to develop breast-related adverse events (RR1.17; 95% 0.86, 1.58; P=0.31). This includes a high risk of mastectomy flap necrosis (RR1.91; 95% 1.03, 3.55;P=0.04) and post-operative wound infection (RR 1.63; 95% 0.91, 2.91;P=0.1).

CONCLUSION

AeroForm-based tissue expanders represent a new era of breast reconstruction. These devices provided an earlier transition to exchange for the permanent implant with a convenient and comfortable expansion process. This was associated with a high satisfaction rate for patients and surgeons.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE III

This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .