What is Breast Reduction Surgery?

Hi my name is Dr. Effie Politis with Politis Plastic Surgery.

Breast reduction is a great surgery for women that have enlarged or symptomatically enlarged breasts. So most of these women have failed medical management and what that means is they’ve tried wearing compression garments wearing supportive garments. They have upper neck back pain that’s unrelieved some of them get migraines so they do seek out a plastic surgery to reduce their breasts. So it reduces the actual volume and weight of the breast it also reduces the width and in conjunction that always we ways raise the nipple areolar complex into the appropriate position on the chest wall. So what it involves is it’s not that their nipple areolas are just taken off and moved up so we have to know our blood supply so it’s maintained on a pedicle of blood supply. And then the remaining breast tissue is shaved from around that blood supply and then we rearranged the skin again in a geometric fashion to look aesthetically pleasing. So it’ll generally involve an incision around the nipple areola and down to the inframammary fold we have to reduce the breast in a vertical and transverse dimension. I tell them so that’s where you get that lollipop and also an incision along the fold I use modified vertical pattern so what that means is I don’t use the older wise pattern breast reduction. I like the breast to appear more aesthetically pleasing not a boxy shape but kind of a teardrop nice shape. And I think the patients appreciate that and they don’t end up with scars from their cleavage all the way to their axilla. So minimal scar approach for these patients who have very large pendulous breasts but most importantly the patient-related outcome study shows that the patients are extremely happy because it immediately relieves their neck back pain their migraines. I mean immediately in the recovery room they are just so appreciative they don’t require drains it’s done in an outpatient setting and then after four weeks they’re cleared and ready to go back to all of their activities. Now if they have a light duty or desk job they certainly recover in just a few days. There’s usually no narcotics involved in the post-operative care regimen and it’s not a painful procedure to be honest with you.