William E. Stehbens

Seromas and prolonged, excessive drainage of serous fluid constitute the most common complications of mastectomy for breast carcinoma. The pathogenesis of this drainage problem is analysed from a pathological perspective and encompasses the role of biomechanical stresses involved in healing. Closed suction drainage delays healing and contributes to the accumulation of serum fluid in the wound. Suction of air into the patient's wound potentiates chronic drainage and seroma formation, adding to patient discomfort and increased risk of infection. The principle of primary union of the wound should be reinstated in mastectomies and to this end relevant changes in the surgical and postoperative management are proposed.

Ubiquitous atherosclerotic changes in fetal and pediatric subjects demonstrate the fundamental importance of repetitive hemodynamic stresses and cannot be explained on the basis of the hypercholesterolemic/lipid hypothesis because serum cholesterol levels at this age lie within allegedly "desirable blood levels." This fact, inconsistent with the lipid hypothesis, renders absurd the widespread dietary restriction of cholesterol and animal fats as prevention of atherosclerosis. Iatrogenic effects of atherosclerosis in humans and its experimental production in herbivores at serum cholesterol levels below infant levels strongly support the "vascular fatige" concept and negate the lipid hypothesis. Neither is atherosclerosis a manifestation of senescence because age is merely a time factor indicating the duration of exposure to hemodynamic stresses that are variable with time and location.