Surgical treatment of gynecomastia

Gynecomastia describes a benign increase of the mammary gland in men. When medical treatment fails, the surgical procedure is the treatment of choice. There are two main surgical procedures: subdermal mastectomy and liposuction. To evaluate the results after surgical treatment (mastectomy) performed in a general surgery unit. We performed a retrospective study; all the patients operated for gynecomastia were reviewed. The clinical, imaging, biological, intraoperative and histological data were included into a MS Access database and statistical analyzed. From 1990-2007, 114 patients were admitted in the First Surgical Clinic Iaşi for gynecomastia. Only 12.6% from the patients were with bilateral gynecomastia. The mean age was 40.54 +/- 1.83 years old (range 12-84). Mean body mass was 26.72 +/- 0.46 kg/m2 (range 18.5-41), and about 20% from the patients had a BMI of over 30 kg/m2. We also noted that 46.5% were smokers. Simon classification was used for preoperative staging: 2.6% from the cases (N = 3) were included in stage I, 16.7% (N = 19) in stage IIa, 50% (N = 57) in stage IIb and 30.7% in stage III. The patients included in stages IIa and I are younger then the patients included in stage III (p = 0.024). Mastodynia was noted in 46 cases (40.4%). Ultrasound exam was performed in all the cases, and the larger diameter of the nodule measured was 3.75 +/- 0.18 cm (range 0.5-9.7). Only three cases were preoperatively treated with tamoxifen. Most of the cases were operated using general anesthesia (53.5%). Mastectomy was performed by peri-areolar (70.2%), elliptical (28.9%) or radial (0.9%) incisions. The subdermal mastectomy using peri-areolar approach was performed especially for the cases included in stages I, IIa and IIb--p < 10(-3). The epi-pectoral vacuum drainage has been used in 79.8%. The postoperative morbidity rate was 15.8%--4 cases of hematoma, 13 cases of seroma and 1 case complicated with skin necrosis. No specific risk factors for postoperative complications were found by univariate and multivariate statistical analysis. The pathological exam revealed pseudo-gynecomastia in 6 cases; the other cases presented dilated ducts. We also noted intraductal papillary hyperplasia in 87 cases and chronic inflammation in 35 cases. The histological exam also revealed intraductal papilloma--9 cases, fibro-adenoma--1 case, papillary ductal carcinoma--1 case and mucinous carcinoma--1 case. From all these data, the etiological diagnosis in presented series was