Steam burn as a late complication of nonsensate DIEP flap after breast reconstruction

The breast is an erogenous, sexual sensory region. Autologous breastreconstruction operations have increased, but studies continue toexamine tissue innervation (Magarakis et al., 2013). As some sensesare regained with the regeneration of nerves from the adjacent residual postmastectomy skin, this avoids an additional operationrequired for nerve coaptation (Spiegel, Menn, Eldor, Kaufman, &Dellon, 2013).This letter presents a late burn injury of a patient with an autologous breast reconstruction with a Deep Inferior Epigastric ArteryPerforator flap.A 40-year-old woman with nonspecific invasive breast cancerunderwent a mastectomy and immediate reconstruction with a DIEPflap. Postoperative follow-up was performed routinely. The patientwas admitted 1.5 years later when her reconstructed right breast wasburned by steam. While the patient was using a pressure cooker, shewas exposed to the steam for less than a minute. The steam penetrated through the skin directly. After a few hours when she took offher clothes, she realized that she had burns. The working principle ofa pressure cooker is that the temperature of the steam must beabove 100
C. On physical examination, there was 8 × 6 cm necroticeschar and third degree burn (Figure 1). The patient stated that shedid not feel any pain when she was burned. Burn escharectomy wasperformed and the defect was left to heal secondarily. Wound healing was complete by 4 weeks and patient was followed up for2 months.

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