Actigraphy-based modeling of patient recovery following breast reconstruction surgery

An estimated 266,120 women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018. A mastectomy is recommended in over a third of breast cancer patients, with the option to undergo breast reconstruction. Despite 90,000 breast reconstruction surgeries being performed annually, there is limited quantitative patient-centered recovery information to guide patient decision-making. The primary objective of this paper is to improve recovery for breast reconstruction patients. Preoperatively, the objective is to inform decisions on breast reconstruction options and postoperatively, the objective is to improve the recovery experience. Our study seeks to expand understanding of recovery through the deployment of actigraphy and daily surveys. We outline a preliminary study of four patients and found that patient-generated data can be employed to measure recovery projections across patients with acceptable compliance. We have not found statistically significant differences in time to normal between the types of reconstruction. However, our preliminary results indicate significant linear trends in the recovery of our patients as measured by various predictors. A larger sample size could be beneficial when exploring predictors of recovery.