expanders are part of recon when you have a mastectomy they reomove all breast tissue so the expander is used to create a new pocket for putting an implant in when your skin has been stretched by the expander
If your going to have rads talk to the plastic surgeon and your med onc and rad onc dont be afraid to ask any questions get second opinons, rads can sometimes cause scaring and incapsulation can aslo sometimes occur making the insertion of the implant more problematic
You might be advised to wait till rads are done and then do recon when healed from the rads
I'm sitting right now in horrible situatian becasue they did put an expander in when I had my dble mastectomy (they knew I had node involvement which is more a less a guarantee that rads are needid) I have been having my fills and have one left to be fully expanded and ready for the exchange I have three chemos to go and then the decision of rads has to be made. If I have rads the scaring can made the implant not work as well as it could be or find out what the chance of recurrance is if I dont do rads
I was diagnosed stage 2 idc and ilc esrogen + with 4 nodes found cancerous