Breast Surgery as an OB/Gyn

[The Knife & Gun Club]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I know it’s not conventional but has anyone heard of people doing a breast surgery fellowship after an OBGyn residency? My SO absolutly loves OBGyn, but her real dream is to one day be a breast surgeon.

I know this seems kind of silly - obviously if you want to do breast you should be going through gen Surg. But she just doesn’t don’t want to go through 7 years of training in something she doesn’t love.

I know it’s not easy but has it ever been done?

 

[MediCane2006]

I know it’s not conventional but has anyone heard of people doing a breast surgery fellowship after an OBGyn residency? My SO absolutly loves OBGyn, but her real dream is to one day be a breast surgeon.

I know this seems kind of silly - obviously if you want to do breast you should be going through gen Surg. But she just doesn’t don’t want to go through 7 years of training in something she doesn’t love.

I know it’s not easy but has it ever been done?

Not that I’m aware of.

Breast surgery gets a bad rap as being “easy surgery” but you need to be comfortable with the surgeries before refining your technique in fellowship (while learning all the complexities of oncologic management). Perhaps @Winged Scapula can speak more to this, but my opinion is that it’s not a specialty you can pick up in a year without any prior training in breast surgery.

 

[WinslowPringle]

General surgery can be five years (and is at a lot of programs). Still a long time, but it doesn't have to be 7 years.

Here is the link to the SSO-approved breast fellowships.

Here is a link to an old thread in which this was asked and Winged Scapula had some good answers.

 

[Winged Scapula]

I know it’s not conventional but has anyone heard of people doing a breast surgery fellowship after an OBGyn residency? My SO absolutly loves OBGyn, but her real dream is to one day be a breast surgeon.

I know this seems kind of silly - obviously if you want to do breast you should be going through gen Surg. But she just doesn’t don’t want to go through 7 years of training in something she doesn’t love.

I know it’s not easy but has it ever been done?

It has been done.

However, most OB-Gyn residencies do little to no breast surgery or even non surgical breast management.

There are only very very few (last I checked it was 2) approved breast oncology surgery fellowships that accept Ob-Gyn trained residents. The reason is 2 fold:

1) for those programs that require it, you are not eligible to take general surgery or Surg Onc call;

2) more importantly, while breast surgery is not technically challenging, most breast programs do not want to start from scratch teaching someone general surgery techniques and patient management.

As I noted in the linked thread above (thanks @WinslowPringle ), the year is not 100% surgical with rotations in Rads, Path, Med and Rad Onc.

Furthermore, most training programs are not extremely high volume; you’re not doing tons of cases 5 days per week, so it’s a lot to learn in a short time.

There’s also not much interest: Ob-Gyns have enough malpractice issues without adding the high litigation risk of a breast practice.

Finally, I know the OB-Gyn mentioned in the referenced thread well. She actually did 2 years of fellowship and has been unable to get privileges to do breast surgery outside of her training program and it’s affiliated hospitals. 10+ years in, she’s still there.YMMV.

Hope this helps.

 

[Dr G Oogle]

I’ve heard of at least one gyn onc doing a breast fellowship because his future practice wanted him to do it. Not sure how that worked out and there’s a lot of difference between someone who’s completed gyn onc and someone who’s only done an obgyn residency

 

[Winged Scapula]

I might also add that “doing something for seven years that you don’t want to do” is shortsighted.

First general surgery is a minimum of five years not seven at most programs and Breast fellowships do not require two years of research to match. Thus it’s only one year longer than the OB/GYN residency.

Secondly nearly everyone doing a general surgery fellowship feels the same way. Future CT Surgeons arent overwhelmingly interested on their colorectal rotations etc. However the surgical techniques and practices that you learn during general surgery residency can be applied to most any subspecialty.

The real issue is that your significant other should not do a general surgery residency unless she could see herself practicing that. If she fails to match into a breast fellowship then she has few other avenues for practice.

If she would prefer straight OB/GYN then that’s the route she should go but it can possibly limit her practice options as noted above.

 

[gyngyn]

I know Ob-Gyns who did a breast fellowship.
The ones I know are in successful practices limited to breast surgery.

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

The real issue is that your significant other should not do a general surgery residency unless she could see herself practicing that. If she fails to match into a breast fellowship then she has few other avenues for practice.

If she would prefer straight OB/GYN then that’s the route she should go but it can possibly limit her practice options as noted above.

Thank you so much @Winged Scapula for such a thoughtful, informative response. Really can't thank you enough.

What I quoted above is her exact predicament. She can not see herself doing any other area of general surgery, while she could do OBGyn and be happy enough.

In any case thanks to everyone who replied!

 

[jdh71]

I know it’s not conventional but has anyone heard of people doing a breast surgery fellowship after an OBGyn residency? My SO absolutly loves OBGyn, but her real dream is to one day be a breast surgeon.

I know this seems kind of silly - obviously if you want to do breast you should be going through gen Surg. But she just doesn’t don’t want to go through 7 years of training in something she doesn’t love.

I know it’s not easy but has it ever been done?

One time during a discussion of complications related to hysterectomy as I'd helped take care of a lady in the icu who had had some bad luck I had a gyn-onc trained friend ask me, "do you know why gyn-onc fellowship is four years?" I didn't. And his response, "its so we can learn to operate"