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So you’ve had your breast surgery and your surgeon placed a drain. We call that a JP drain or a Jackson Pratt drain. Basically what those drains do is that they keep fluid from building up in your surgical site. Those drains are usually placed during mastectomy, or when we do lymph node dissections, or even patients who’ve had a large lumpectomy. And the process is, it keeps the fluid from building up because those fluids, what we call seromas, can cause infections. It’s basically a little tube, a little plastic tube, anywhere between two and three feet, that extends from the body. And at the end of the tube, there’s a bulb. And what that bulb does, it’s under pressure and it pulls the fluid out so it doesn’t build up within the breast or in the underarm. Your nurses or your physician will go over how to take care of those drains. And what they’ll also do is that they’ll teach you on the maintenance of it, how to strip the drain and how to do the daily care.
