Histopathological Scoring Improves the Correlation Between Capsular Contracture Diagnosis and Patient-Reported Outcomes.

[BACKGROUND] The Baker classification is used to grade capsular contracture after breast-implant surgery; yet, its correlation with patient-reported outcomes is poor.

[OBJECTIVES] To determine whether histopathological verification of capsular contracture status strengthens the association between Baker grade and BREAST-Q scores.

[METHODS] Women scheduled for implant exchange or removal completed the BREAST-Q "Physical Well-Being-Chest" module. Raw BREAST-Q sum scores were transformed to a 0-100 scale, where higher scores indicate increased comfort. The attending surgeon classified breasts using the Baker scale (I-IV). Capsule biopsies were scored with a validated histopathological scoring system. Baker grades were deemed "confirmed" when histology and Baker grade were aligned and otherwise deemed "misclassified". Linear regressions compared the relationship between BREAST-Q scores and Baker grade in confirmed vs misclassified cases.

[RESULTS] A total of 103 patients (58 augmentation, 45 reconstruction) were included. The Baker classification was confirmed histologically in 53/58 augmentation patients (91%), and 36/45 reconstruction patients (80%). In confirmed augmentation cases, each one-grade increase in Baker significantly worsened chest well-being by -8.80 BREAST-Q points (95% CI [-14.42, -3.18]; P = .003). No correlation was found in the misclassified augmentation cases (-3.21 points; P = .57), confirmed reconstruction cases (-5.00 points; P = .19), or in the misclassified reconstruction cases (-5.72 points; P = .54).

[CONCLUSIONS] Histologically confirmed Baker classification correlates significantly with chest well-being assessed with BREAST-Q for the patients with breast augmentation, whereas no such correlation was observed in cases where the histology and Baker classification showed a mismatch. This suggests that histopathological scoring can increase diagnostic accuracy when assessing capsular contracture status.