Breast Lift

There are several different types of breast lifts and it has to do with what the resulting scar pattern is going to be. It can be as minimal as just a scar around the areola, what we refer to as a donut mastopexy. The next would be a vertical mastopexy, and that's the donut scar plus a vertical scar. And then there's the anchor scar, which is that plus a scar that is in the inframammary crease. What determines which one a patient needs is either how droopy the breast is or how large it is, or the combination of the two. Candidates for breast reduction are those women who have excessively large breasts who are unhappy with them. They usually also cause a disruption to their daily life because they have upper back pain, neck pain, and shoulder pain. Both breast lift and breast reductions usually take between two and three hours in the operating room. What determines exactly how long it takes is how droopy the breast is or how large it is, or if we're going to be doing any adjunctive procedures such as liposuction combined with it. I think most of my patients find that their recovery from breast lift and breast reduction is easier than they anticipated. I typically have them tell me at their first postoperative visit that their pain was much better than expected. I let my patients go back to work after three to five days, so they have resumed their normal daily activities at that time. If they have smaller children, they can usually begin lifting them two to three weeks after surgery. And I let all of those patients resume exercise after about six weeks. A lot of my patients ask me if they can have a breast implant at the same time as their breast lift. And the answer to that is yes. I would say about 50% of my breast lift patients get an implant at the time of their procedure. The main reason for that is they want that enhanced upper pole volume of the breast, that more rounded look. They may also want more cleavage and generally, they just want to be a little bit larger. So if your breasts are droopy and you do want more volume, then you can certainly have a breast implant combined with your breast lift.