Breast Lift |

BREAST LIFT (Mastopexy)

Definition

Elevates and restructures drooping breasts. This can be done alone or can also be done along with breast augmentation procedure.

Purpose

To help patients having breast augmentation but still has sagging breasts.
To help patients with sagging breasts from abrupt extreme loss of body weight.
To help patients with sagging breasts from excessive breast reduction.

Main Reasons of Sagging Breast

Advancing age
Constant gravitational pull to breast tissues
Abrupt and even slow but excessive weight loss,
Giving birth
Breastfeeding

The Pencil Test

breast lift

The pencil test is a kind of assessment where a pencil will be put underneath the breast fold and if the pencil will not fall with only the fold holding it alone, this could indicate that a person needs a breast lift.

Risks of the Breast Lift Surgery

Although uncommon, here are the usual complications of Breast Lift:

Infection
hematoma
adverse reaction to anesthesia
asymmetrical results
excessive and abnormal scarring,
loss of sensation to breast

Preparation for Breast Lift

One must prepare in advance. Eat a lot of healthy foods especially that can contribute to healing process. If you are a smoker, try to alter your habit months before the procedure. Strictly 2 weeks prior to surgery no nicotine must be taken in the body the same with alcohol and blood thinning drugs. A patient must research in advance what are things to do during the recovery so that they could be psychologically prepared for the healing process.

Brief View of Surgical Process

The procedure takes 1-3 hours to be done. It is usually performed using general anesthesia in a hospital or in an office surgical area. The amount of needed lift usually will control the quantity of openings. Incisions will also depend on the surgical technique being used by the surgeon. The structures underneath your breasts will be raised up and restructured. In addition to that the nipple and the areola will be moved to a more favorable height. Breasts skin will be reduced if necessary. After all these, the incisions will be closed in an artful and fine fashion making the possible scars hardly noticeable. Your selection of breast lift method should also rely on the grade of breast drooping.

Recovery

Right after the breast lift surgery, discomfort due to swelling and bruising may generally be felt by the patients, and usually these will last for up to 10-20 days.

Bra

Surgical bra is required to be worn 1-2 weeks post operatively, or depending on the surgeon’s mandate. Sports bra will then be worn after this for up to a few months.

Sutures

After 10-14 days, the sutures will be removed.

Sleeping position

Sleeping on your belly should extremely be avoided for 2-3 weeks after surgery. A patient must sleep with the chest slightly elevated than the rest of the body.

Body Cleaning

No showering should be done, and the patient should just take sponge baths when cleaning oneself, this would go on until the removal of sutures.

Activities

Avoid doing strenuous activities, also avoid raising your arms or bending over to prevent blood pooling on the surgical area. Usually patients can go back to work with light nature jobs in a week time. Full swelling and bruising disappearance could take up to many months together with the final result. Always remember not to wear bra with underwire during the recovery process. Each patient has different healing process so as the reason why no definite number of months of full recovery is noted here. Numbness and burning sensation on the affected area felt by the patient will be normal. Around 1-2 months this would stay and would disappear thereafter. Scars could be very visible during the first 2-3 months but would disappear slowly but not completely. There will be some little but hard to notice remnants that will really stay.

Please Remember:

Most patients are not advised to bear a child after this because pregnancy and childbirth could make your breasts back to sagging stage again.

Realistic view

Scars would be there and will stay there. But when looking at the greater positive result of having firmer breasts than before, the presence of hardly noticeable scars would still be worth it.