To Best Offer You Options, Plastic Surgeons Must Be Familiar With All Breast Implant Approaches



Posted: Thursday, October 15, 2009

by
LookingYourBest.com

There are many different surgical options within breast enhancement. To be able to offer you options, a surgeon must be familiar with different approaches and implants and have the experience and skill to apply those options confidently. No specific set of surgical options is best for every patient. If you are offered only one set of options, that may be the only options a surgeon can offer - consult other surgeons.

Every patient tends to think that the options she chose are also the best options for someone else, that isn't true because no two women are exactly alike. Your tissues are definitely different. No surgical option is perfect. No cosmetic breast surgery option is without trade-offs. The question is whether you know the relative benefits and trade-offs and pick the options that best maximize the benefits and minimize the trade-offs. If you and your plastic surgeon don't discuss your tissues and how your tissues influence the best choice of breast implant for you, you will need to blame something or someone for the consequences. You will probably blame the breast implant or the cosmetic surgeon, when it's really you who's largely responsible.

The most important priority in selecting a pocket for the implant is to assure optimal tissue coverage over your implant for your entire lifetime. Optimal tissue coverage means assuring that all portions and edges of your implant are covered by the most tissue available, given your body characteristics.

If your tissues are thin in the areas that cover your breast implant (and we will show you how to measure later), you may need to put the breast implant partially behind muscle, especially in the upper and middle areas of the breast, to assure adequate tissue cover over the breast implant. If you don't, you run more risks of seeing the edges of your implant and seeing visible traction rippling later, both of which are usually uncorrectable. But there is much more to making the decision.

Implants in the past have been placed in one of two locations: In front of your pectoralis muscle, but behind your breast tissue - behind your pectoralis muscle or retro-mammary placement - partial retropectoral placement.

Now there is a new and frequently better option: dual plane1 - behind muscle in the upper breast and behind breast tissue in the lower breast - the best of both worlds above, while minimizing the trade-offs of each!

When silicone-gel-filled implants were available and widely used in the United States, surgeons began placing implants partially behind the pectoralis muscle because silicone-gel implants had a lower risk of capsular contracture (excessive firmness) when they were placed partially behind the pectoralis. With today's saline-filled implants, the risk of capsular contracture is about the same whether the breast implant is placed in front of the muscle or behind the muscle. So how do you choose, and what difference does it make? The choice is based on the thickness of your tissues - how much thickness you have to cover your brast implants.

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Dave Stringham, the President of LookingYourBest.com writes about breast augmentation books and plastic surgery procedures such as breast augmentation, breast reduction, breast reconstruction, breast implants, and breast lift.
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