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I have another theory - perhaps those who got reconstruction did so because they were in good enough health to withstand the surgery, and good health was already a predictive factor for longer survival. When I was diagnosed, I was told that the issue of reconstruction was a matter of what they expected to find when they opened me up and what they did find - that is, local disease only (2 lymph nodes, but no spread to anything past the sentinal nodes). Since I did not need to rush to chemo (I was told I could wait four to six weeks), I had time to recover from the reconstruction (which takes a lot longer to recover from than a mastectomy alone), and I was healthy enough to withstand 4-6 hours of surgery (compared to the two or three involved with mastectomy alone). I was always told that being fit and in good general health prior to my cancer diagnosis would be a good prognostic factor. But it also is a factor that perhaps points towards the possibility of having reconstruction as well. Get it?
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