Drains after Masectomy

hello barb. My mother had mastectomy about 10 days ago. She came home with two drains, one has been removed a few days ago as it was less than 30 mls on two consecutive days. But the other one is still there. The surgeon initially said it needs to stay in for 2 weeks, but the district nurses that come kept wanting to remove it at day 7, and said maximum it can stay is 10 days… as there’s a higher chance of infection. 
however I had to quickly phone uP the breast care nurse today and she said to leave it as it’s draining a lot more than 30mls. She was busy so she said she will ring me Later, but for now to leave it as it is. I think it really depends on the surgeon and also on the individual case. 

The district nurse normally comes every two days to check the drain, but other than that I drain the bulb into the bag myself for her. 

Hi Barb,

I had a mastectomy two months ago.  Initially I had 2 drains in but one of them de-vacced after a couple of day so it was removed.  The other stayed in a week until I had a postop check and as Daisy03  mentioned, it was producing less than 30m so was removed. I was given a little shoulder bag (yes it was very useful because if you forget to pick up the bottle it can tug a little bit) to carry the 2 drainage bottles in and I took note of the amount of drainage each day and texted it to the breast nurse.  It was all quite straight forward but I wasn’t sorry to have them removed.  

Good luck and all the best

Thank you that’s helped a lot. It’s such a great group on here for information and suuport.

That’s good advice, I will get a bag in case my hospital doesn’t provide one. So grateful for all the help and support given. 

No worries Barb. Hope everything goes well