Breast Augmentations and Lifts - Should They be Separated?
Many women are dissatisfied with more than one aspect of their breasts, and as women age (even into their thirties), breast size and sagging are the two most common complaints. While ordinary logic tells us that it would be sensible to do both breast lift surgery and breast implant surgery at the same time (saving money and recovery time in the process), this is usually not the technique which gets the best outcome for many women. We look at both the pros and cons of combining breast implant and lift surgeries.
Why combine?
Every part of our practical experience tells us that it makes sense to organize to have all the plastic surgery that you will want done completed at the same time. There are obvious benefits to this approach:
- The surgeon needs to be paid for their time, and consultations, preparation and anaesthesia can all be reduced overall by combining two procedures.
- Recovery time might be two weeks per surgery. Combining the two means a total of two-three weeks recovery, rather than at least four.
- The disruption to your life is much less - everything is over and done with at once.
Why separate procedures?
The basic reason to separate procedures is to ensure that the final result is as predictable and close to your wishes as possible, and reduce the need for revision breast surgery. When your breasts are being operated on, the tissue and muscle is under a lot of trauma. What looks like an optimal result when the surgeon is working on them may turn out to be quite different than either you or he expect, when the healing process is complete. Here are the basic reasons that separating the procedure is the preferred tactic:
- The breast implant and lift combination is an extremely complex procedure
- It is very difficult to work to plan when the tissue is already traumatized
- The results are much more difficult to predict
- The risk of excessive scarring is much greater with the combination procedure
- The risk of infection is much greater than with either breast lift surgery or breast implant surgery alone
- With all of the above factors combined, the chance that you’ll need to go back (unexpectedly) for revision surgery is much higher
Sometimes one is enough
Even though there are two things that women want to ‘fix’ about their breasts when they are considering an implant-lift combo, one procedure or the other may completely satisfy them. Patients that begin with the breast lift may find that the surgery provides an improvement in shape that achieves what they thought an increase in size was needed for.
Surgical choice difficulties
There are quite a number of different types of breast lift surgery techniques (mastopexy), including periareolar mastopexy, vertical mastopexy, inverted T mastopexy and combinations of these. It is difficult to tell which will give the best result until surgeons have seen what affect the implant has on your breasts … and making decisions on the fly is never an ideal surgical tactic!
It may take a little more time and a little more money, but separating your breast lift surgery and breast implant surgery will almost certainly give you better results in the long run. And breasts are for life!
Breast Lift Will Change Your Looks says:
[...] Breast Augmentations and Lifts While ordinary logic tells us that it would be sensible to do both breast lift surgery and breast implant surgery at the same time (saving money and recovery time in the process), this is usually not the technique which gets the best results. [...]
January 9th, 2010 at 5:46 am