The cancer patient faces several challenges in the course of the disease, the therapies and their side effects, including changes in physical appearance. This has fortunately led to the need to flank traditional therapies, both medical and surgical, with treatments dedicated to the patient's serenity and self-confidence.

Cancer sufferers also often suffer from loneliness, isolation and depression. They no longer recognise themselves in their sick body, and even trying to restore a normal appearance, for those going through this painful experience, is an aid to feeling better.

It might seem a superficial attitude that of those who, after a cancer diagnosis, worry about their appearance. Well, it is not at all. Aesthetic changes are sometimes as frightening as, and perhaps even before, health consequences. it is perfectly normal; after all, we communicate and present ourselves to the outside world primarily through our bodies. Moreover, most therapies leave marks on the body that are a constant reminder of the disease and thus have a more than negative impact on a person's life. And, along with physical pain, comes mental pain, insecurity, embarrassment, rejection of a body in which one no longer recognises oneself. In short, feeling at ease with the sick body is crucial for patients who have to face an illness such as cancer without shame.

The effects that surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy can have on the body are well known: hair and eyebrow loss, swelling, scarring, inflammation, burns, discolouration and more.

In the past, those who found themselves in this situation were not always helped sufficiently. After all, the tendency is rightly to focus on the pathology, thus neglecting the well-being of the person as a whole. Fortunately, today this is an issue that has begun to be addressed. Taking care of one's body thus becomes a way of forgetting about being a patient and becoming a person again.

Probably the most striking case in which cosmetic surgery can help is undoubtedly breast cancer. Patients in these cases almost all undergo an operation to remove diseased tissue and, in cases where the entire mammary gland has to be removed, a reconstruction operation with possible symmetry of the healthy breast is always proposed. We believe that breast augmentation should always be recommended, indeed almost imposed, as a means of regaining one's femininity despite the harsh experience one has undergone. The results of a reconstruction can in fact be really high even when the nipple, the most delicate element to be recreated, has to be removed.