Research by the Medical Accident Group found that 65% of the people surveyed regretted the surgery, although 28% were very satisfied with the results. According to the survey, 83% of people who had undergone plastic surgery would not consider undergoing any type of cosmetic procedure again. A recent study by Fortunato et al21 surveyed patients who underwent a mastectomy with or without breast reconstruction over a 10-year period. The results of the 328 patients revealed that emotional and social functioning scores improved significantly in the cohort that underwent breast reconstruction after a mastectomy compared to the cohort that did not undergo reconstruction.
21 Despite this finding, 21% of the patients were dissatisfied with their reconstruction or regretted their decision to perform it, 21 regret for the decision based on the type of breast reconstruction was not evaluated. In some patients, surgical complications or social factors were cited as a reason for regret and, when requesting the cancellation of genital surgery, no change in the patient's gender identity was clarified (see Table 2, Etiologies of Regret). However, there was a significant correlation between the low level of optimism and regret for the decision in non-white women with higher levels of mild and severe regret. According to these studies conducted by Zhong et al13 and Cai and Momeni14, better preoperative education can reduce regret for making a decision among patients seeking breast reconstruction. Compared to medically necessary health care decisions (which are not yet immune to regret for making a decision), elective health care decisions are especially vulnerable to retrospective review and regret of both patients and surgeons.
Medical regret includes regret caused by the direct result of surgery or an irreversible consequence of surgery. In particular, patients may have gone to the office of several surgeons, which has led to an overestimation of the prevalence of regret. The terms included (regret) and (transgender) and (surgery) or (satisfaction) and (transgender) and (surgery). We recognize that regret and surgical reversal are complex and multifaceted phenomena that do not have an easy treatment route.
57 percent of surgeons found at least one patient who expressed regret, and a total of 62 patients expressed regret (0.2— 0.3%). The purpose of this review is to analyze existing research on breast reconstruction with the objective of improving the understanding of regret for making decisions in the field of plastic surgery and identifying effective tools to reduce its incidence after aesthetic procedures. Regret for making a decision has become a common metric in patient-reported outcome studies in the literature on hand surgery. Conversely, patients seeking surgical reversion may not have had access to additional surgical care, underestimating the prevalence of regret.
While both regret and requests for surgical reversion are rare, the need to develop guidelines is critical to providing high-quality care to this patient population, regardless of prevalence. The experience of regret for making a decision can have adverse psychological effects on the patient and damage the relationship between the patient and the surgeon.
