| Dear HN-Community,
First of all I want to thank you all very much for all this wonderful support, kind feedback and overall interest in the study. I am completely overwhelmed by the amount of responses and interest.
I try my best to keep up with all comments and feedback.
It is nearly 23:00 o'clock here in Germany and I had a day full of surgeries - and my schedule for tomorrow is packed as well. So please forgive me if I have to grab a few hours of sleep and may not be able to answer all questions immediately. I will do my best to keep up with everything as good as possible! Just a few additional information in general in response to some frequently asked questions. The goal of this study is to get a more profound understanding of what aspects and factors of the female breast in connection with breast surgeries are being percieved as aesthetically pleasing. Why is this so important?
Of course we know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder - and surgery decisions are not based on aesthetics alone.
But believe it or not - in the majority of cases patients are overwhelmed by taking decisions regarding the surgery of their own breast. Especially in case of breast cancer, the situation is so difficult and live changing for patients, that it's super difficult to take clear decisions or even just focus on own preferences.
Other obvious factors like medical aspects or potential pain aside - for many patients it is extremely important to get profound pre-operative advice on what "generally" is seen as "aesthetically pleasing".
E.g. do people like it more if there is a slight asymmetry after breast reconstruction - or is it better to do a correction but therefore have scars.
There are many decisions that have to be taken - and for most patients it is very helpful to get good advice.
Of course there are patients that know exactly what they want - and what their preferences are.
However - as strange is this might sound - for the majority of patients that is not the case. The goal of this study is to get a better understanding of what factors and aspects of the female breast and surgery conditions do have an influence of the aesthetic perception.
The survey contains 88 picture pairs - no pair is equal (although some look quite similar).
The order of the pictures is being randomized for every participant.
The number of 88 pictures is the minimum number that we need to cover every possible "real-life" condition of a breast to get enable a profound statistical analysis.
Some pictures might seem similar to you - but your decision allows us to gather a lot of data about why you took that decision and thereby better understand what factors really have an influence.
In the end, we hope to find out what aspects do matter more than others - in order to then be able to give patients better advice (e.g. scars are percieved as more aesthetical than an asymmetry if the asymmetry is just one cup size). We know that this study is not perfect - but as far is we know it is by far the most sophisticated study in this area so far. Therefore we hope that we can maybe gather new helpful data.
And if only one surgery can be improved, we already helped one patient to get a better result than otherwise. Therefore, thank you all very much for your support and time!
I will do my best to reply to every comment and feedback!
Thank you, Magnus |