after breast augmentation how long does the pain last

another issue that patients often see mefor is the breast lift. this is very often forpatients who had children before and have donebreastfeeding and they feel that their breasts have sort of started to sag a little bit often times they'll say that they feel like their breasts are deflated in appearance and that they would like to have thebreasts a little bit higher, lifted and just love a rejuvenated. i'd saythat pretty commonly it's the case where if you see thesepost-pregnancy

breast shape, a lot of times it does have a deflated appearance a lot times it does have a little bit of a saggy appearance as well and so in my mind there's sort of two dimensions withregard to how to decide what is a patient's need in some cases its just a breastaugmentation with a simple implant in some cases it's a breast lift, and in somepatients it can be a combination of both and i would say that for my patients it'sactually really divided about a third and a third and a third i mean a third for implant, a third for the lift, and a third a combination of the two

it's very much based on the patient's examination, what theirgoals are, how they looked before and yes basically a combination of all those so ithink the initial assessment and consultation is very important for determining what's the best. in terms of bestcandidates for things like a breast lift or breastrejuvenation, i would say that the best candidates typically are patients who have finished having children their breasts they think have kind of finished all thechanges that will happen with pregnancy and with breastfeeding and they'rereally at this point where they don't

want that kind of want to get some rejuvenation and move on and so i think in those patients thoseare good candidates in particular very good candid are patientswho have been overall pretty fit, taken care ofthemselves with regard to trying to manage sure they're overallpost-pregnancy weight and i said only because sometimes the breast, in terms of trying to get a lift, it canbe difficult to get a lift if the breasts are very large

and so patients who area a little bit moreon the thinner side sort of do have better outcomes, and i think that works very well for them. let's talk about the procedure a breast lift can really be done in a variety of ways. i'd say that in my practice typically there are three ways that i often see it working for patients. a veryclassical way is what's called an inverted t method or a wise pattern. what thisis essentially is a specific away of lifting up the breast and essentiallylifting up the nipple

putting it into a morerejuvenated position and getting rid of all the extra skinthat's accumulated what happens with pregnancy andwith breastfeeding, the breast do often expand in size and as they come down, the volumedecreases but the skin doesn't completely contract, and so that excess skin does need tobe removed in some patients where the excess skinis not so much the incisions and degree of accessskin can be limited with regard to how much is takenout and in those cases you can do a second

method called a vertical breast lift or what's also called a lollipop incision breast lift, and the third which is sort of the minority but in some patients who really don't have a lot of excess skin and really just have a little bit of nipple sagging that can be improved just using aperiareolar incision, an incision that goes around the nipple itself so this very much depends on pre-operatively where patients are

i usually make that assessment when i first see them in consultation. i make a lot measurements to really see what the best method is forgivingpatients their goal with regard to rejuvenation of the breast. it varies a little bit in terms of lengthdepending on how much skin needs to be removed and also depending on whether theyneed to have an implant replacement at the same time overall i would say thatthe breast lift is done usually in about two-and-a-half to three hours. the procedure is quite straightforward. it is done under generalanesthesia so patients are more comfortable

after the procedure i usually wrap patients up dressings, i put a special surgical bra on them, and have themnot touch the dressings for about a full week and basicallyat about a week after the surgery, when they come back to see me atthat point take out the dressings for them, make sure there's no signs of infection, makesure things are improving and healing well most of the bruising and swelling does go away after about two weeks but things do continue to evolve interms of the breast shape and in terms of the incision maturing, especially within the first six months to a year

and so that shape continues to improve andchange over time and that's expected. post procedure that wetalk a little about for the recovery expectations, i do tell patients that in the first six weeks i don't like them to be doing a lot verystrenuous activity, anything where they're lifting things over 10 pounds. i knowthat's a little bit of a conservative number but i tend to be conservative inmost of my approaches to surgery and trying to help people heal in a verystraightforward way i tell patients that i'd rather they just takethe six weeks off from the gym, heal well, and they can move on with their lives and go back to all their normal activity

rather than having the healing prolonged becausewe want to get you back on our feet soon that's pretty muchabout it for breast lift, again a very straightforward procedure. thekey things i think for breast lift in terms of getting good results are sort of really the pre-operative assessment by theplastic surgeon. really taking measurements, making surethat the specifically planned method for the breast lift really matchesthe patient's body with regard to where the excess skin is when those considerations are taken into account,people get very nice results.