The biggest contrast with the breast augmentation that was practiced years ago and in my fellow colleagues and friends that have had a breast augmentation most of them say it’s excruciatingly painful.
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Breast reduction is a great surgery for women that have enlarged or symptomatically enlarged breasts. Learn more from Dr. Effie Politis.
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You’ve noticed it. Your breasts aren’t similar in shape or size. One is bigger than the other. And you don’t like it. In fact, you are increasingly self-conscious and uncomfortable about it.
Well the truth is no two breasts can match perfectly. There are usually slight differences in size and shape, with one breast often being marginally larger than the other. Fortunately, the difference is usually small enough to overlook.
But when the asymmetry is more severe, embarrassing you, or making you self-conscious, you may need to undergo a procedure to correct the visibly uneven breasts. At Politis Plastic Surgery, we help women feel more comfortable and confident by fixing severe and modest breast asymmetry.
Asymmetry is corrected through breast augmentation, breast lift, breast reduction, or a combination of any of these procedures. The choice of procedure depends on the type and severity of the asymmetry.
Though the chosen procedure may be performed on only one breast, this is quite rare and done with more subtle degrees of asymmetry. In most cases, both breasts require surgery, particularly to address the amount of skin and location of the nipples.
(a) Breast augmentation
When one of your breasts is visibly smaller than the other, a surgeon will often recommend augmenting the smaller breast using saline or silicone implants.
During the procedure, the surgeon may opt to place breast implants in one or both breasts, depending on the severity of the asymmetry and your desired results. It is common to have the breast implant placed in the smaller breast to increase its size.
(b) Breast lift
For breast asymmetry that occurs as excessive sagging on one breast, a breast lift (mastopexy) may be the best option. Your surgeon will remove the sagging and excess skin from one breast and tighten it to give it a more symmetric shape and to support a firmer contour complimenting the other breast. The breast lift procedure is completed through several incision techniques but the choice of technique depends on your specific body.
(c) Breast reduction
When you desire to match your larger breast to your smaller one, your plastic surgeon may recommend breast reduction surgery. Excess breast tissue, skin, and fat are removed from the larger breast via excision or liposuction to reduce it to the size of the smaller breast, creating a contour closer in shape and size to the other breast. Breast reduction usually includes a breast lift, so the procedure may be done on both breasts even if there is only reduction on one side.
(d) Blending of procedures
Simply inserting implants under sagging skin may not give the lift you desire. And placing implants without removing excess, stretched skin may only result in larger, sagging breasts.
Likewise, when only a size boost is needed, in addition to firmer breasts, a breast lift alone may give disappointing results. A breast lift tends to work well for breasts that are fairly even in size and only unevenly shaped but often fails if the breasts are widely different in size.
So in many cases if your breast asymmetry is due to shrinkage, wide variation in size or massive difference in shape, your plastic surgeon will opt for a combination of breast lift, reduction, and augmentation to achieve optimal results. In fact, a breast lift combined with breast augmentation can work beautifully together to correct sagging, increase breast size, and yield shapelier, fuller breasts.
Are you unhappy with your asymmetric breasts? Would you like to fix the asymmetry but aren’t sure about the right procedure? Contact Politis Plastic Surgery today to speak with an experienced, board-certified plastic surgeon who fixes breast asymmetry on a regular basis.
Dr. Effie Politis will give you candid honest recommendations on whether a breast lift, breast augmentation, or a combination of procedures will give you the best results for breast asymmetry. She will also customize the procedure to meet your unique aesthetic goals ensuring you consider different looks and options before you make a decision. For more information on fixing breast asymmetry and other cosmetic issues, visit the site “Politis Plastic Surgery”.
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I love Dr. Politis, I think she’s amazing, I think she truly cares about her patients and wants to do the right thing and the best thing for them, and sometimes the answer to that is that we don’t do surgery on you. We’re not out to take money it’s not, you know, we want to survive but we’re not going to take somebody’s money if we don’t think we can provide them with the outcome that they’re looking for or if we don’t feel like that’s the safest thing for them medically. I always tell people she’s a mom who happens to be a surgeon because I do feel like she puts her family, you know, as a high level of importance in her life. And I respect her for that as part of why I enjoy working with her because I’ve worked with physicians in the past that maybe didn’t put their family first and I think that we all should put our families first that’s what family’s for. I love working with her I feel like we understand each other there’s mutual respect she is comfortable with what I tell her and i’m very comfortable with the responses I get back from her so I feel like we, you know, work really well in that respect
“We absolutely treat our patients like we would expect to be treated if we were patients.” says Jamie Hill, RN of Politis Plastic Surgery
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Hi My name is Dr. Effie Politis with Politis Plastic Surgery. Breast Implant Surgery removal has been very popular lately, especially with all the social media concerns around this Breast Implant illness.
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Hey everyone, it’s Dr. Effie Politis and I just want to compare and contrast saline versus silicone implants, as we know women often undergo breast enhancement surgery to get a breast volume and shape that is more proportional to their body.
So, let’s start out with saline implants: We all know that saline is a fluid that is placed in a silicone shell. It is an “uncontrolled” type fluid, so it doesn’t have a lot of structural support. So it often causes rippling and wrinkling and it stretches out women’s lower-poles.
The advantage of a saline is that if you have a rupture or a tear, your breast will deflate and you can just look in a mirror and see that almost immediately in your body [it] just resorbs the fluid.
Silicone implants that are now in the market are medical grade and they are very cohesive, so they have a nice gel-to-shell ratio and they really help your breast tissue respond nicely. I do enjoy the feel of a silicone implant on my patients because it almost acts as one with their breast tissue. It also provides better structural support in the long term.
However, the issue with silicone implants is that we don’t often recognize a tear. This is why you have to be aware of your body. You have to follow-up with your plastic surgeon at regular surveillance intervals. If you do feel like there is a compromise, most women complain of some breast pain [or] perhaps some scarring around the implant, and we have some imaging modalities to diagnose this, please call our office or DM me on social media if you have any issues with your implants as I am a plastic surgeon with an expertise on breast surgery. Thanks so much.
Do breast implants make you float? Will it save you from drowning?
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What happens when implants too large for your chest/thorax are placed?
Implant displacement, stretched-out thin breast tissue, and asymmetry.
This can only be fixed with revision, implant exchange, implant place change, and tissue scaffold for support.
Patients, do your homework. Implants need to be sized through tissue-based planning techniques by a board-certified plastic surgeon.
The 14-step plan is then initiated in OR to prevent contamination of implants leading to capsular contracture. Otherwise, tissue distortion and collapse as well as device malposition and capsular contracture are guaranteed down the road. This ultimately leads to more surgeries and low patient satisfaction.
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During your consultation, an important question that you need to ask your surgeon is whether or not they follow the 14-Point-Plan.
The 14-Point-Plan is designed to minimize the number of bacteria that can contaminate breast implants at the time of surgery. It was first published in 2013 and has since been widely adopted all around the world. Bacterial contamination of breast implants at the time of surgery has been shown to cause capsular contracture – hardening, pain, and deformity following breast implant surgery.
The 14-Point-Plan outlines strategies that can be incorporated into breast implant surgery that reduce the number of bacteria that can contaminate the breast implant surface.
Here you can see a funnel is being used to place the breast implant into the dissected pocket.
