One of the most transformational procedures available, a breast reduction and lift can change your appearance and deliver incredible health benefits. It can bring permanent relief from the back and neck pain that frequently plagues women with overly large chests; it offers greatly increased mobility, flexibility and freedom; it eliminates the discomfort of bra straps relentlessly digging into your shoulders and can completely restore confidence and eliminate the self-consciousness that often comes with anomalous physical features. This procedure generally goes hand in hand with breast lifts to ensure that your new, smaller bust is perfectly proportioned and looking its best.
Is breast reduction right for me?
If any of the following symptoms sound familiar, it could mean that a breast reduction and lift is for you:
- Back, neck or shoulder pain. If you’re experiencing this and have a large bust, there’s a very good chance the two are related. Your chest is simply too heavy for your frame. Reduction surgery can fix this for good.
- Skin rashes, irritation, infection or other unhealthy conditions beneath your breasts. A large chest creates the combination of strain on the skin, ongoing friction and a lack of airflow in the under-area. Unsurprisingly, this can lead to a number of potentially dangerous skin conditions. If you are suffering from these symptoms, it’s extremely important to address the issue before it causes serious damage. Sometimes this can be done with strategic changes in clothing, lifestyle and activity, but other times a breast reduction and lift is the ideal option.
- Deep bra strap indentations on your shoulders. This is neither normal nor healthy, and should at least be cause to find a different kind of bra that offers adequate levels of support. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. If you’ve tried countless different types of bras, and all of them cause the same discomfort, then a breast reduction might be the best option.
- Pendulous breasts or downward facing nipples and areolas. This is both an aesthetic and health issue. While a lot of people prefer perkier and more youthful looking breasts, it’s also a good gauge for future health concerns. It’s perfectly normal for one’s chest to start sagging with age, but when nipples start pointing distinctly downwards, it indicates severe strain on the skin and breast tissue, and means things are only going to get worse over time. In these situations, a breast reduction and lift can not only bring immediate relief from issues, but also prevent further problems later on.
- Asymmetrical chest. It’s easy to dismiss this as a purely visual issue, but as anyone with very different sized breasts can tell you, it throws you off balance, adversely affects posture and can make finding well-fitting clothes a nightmare. If you have different sized breasts, we can fix it.
- Breasts that get in the way of physical activity. If you’re playing sports, running, or doing any kind of physical activity, enormous breasts can be extremely unhelpful, to say the least. One thing we frequently hear from previous breast reduction patients is how incredible their sudden freedom of movement is. In the words of numerous breast reduction and lift patients, “it’s even better than I imagined.”
- Self-consciousness. It is integral to your confidence and happiness to be mentally and physically comfortable in your own body. Excessively large breasts can be eye-catching for all the wrong reasons, and a lot of women report feelings of being literally and figuratively ‘buried’ underneath them.
How Does a Breast Reduction and Lift Operation Work?
Of all our cosmetic surgery operations, breast reductions have some of the highest satisfaction rates. Thousands of women have experienced revolutionary positive changes in their lives as a result, and there’s no reason you can’t as well. As always, the first step is an initial consultation session in which you’ll meet your surgeon, get answers to any and all questions, talk about how exactly you’d like your bust to look and find out more about the actual surgical process. The operation itself is conducted under general anaesthetic and usually takes about three hours, depending on the amount of tissue to be removed. There are three main types of breast reduction surgery, each of which is better in different situations.
Inverted-T mammoplasty is the most common method. It involves making three small cuts, one around the areola, a vertical one on the breast underside and a horizontal one around the natural below-breast crease. This has the advantages of offering great access to most breast tissue for a smoother and easier operation, while ensuring the incision scars remain unobtrusive. After making the incisions, breast tissue is removed and the skin is retightened around the new, smaller shape. The areola, which usually gets overly stretched in large breasts, is reduced in size and gets shifted to a higher and more natural position along with the nipple. Where necessary, liposuction is applied to the underarm area in order to improve skin contours and achieve a better look.
Vertical mammoplasties are similar to the triple incision method, but dispense with the horizontal incision. These achieve the same results with a simpler operation and less scarring. The downside is that it’s only suitable for moderately large breasts, and won’t work when the chest is too big.
Separating mammoplasties are used in those rare cases where breasts are extremely large. For these, the nipples and areolas need to be completely detached from their underlying tissue in order to achieve natural looking smaller breasts. This unavoidably results in a loss of nipple sensation and an inability to breastfeed. The good news is that the odds of you needing this method are extremely slim, and the other two techniques maintain full sensation and breastfeeding capabilities.
