breast lift and reduction

Hi, I’m Dr. Adam Basner and I’m a board-certified plastic surgeon. In this video, I’m going to talk to you about breast lifts and breast reductions, some of my most favorite procedures. I love these surgeries because they’re very three-dimensional and there’s a lot of artistry involved in getting a beautiful, natural result. Sometimes people are confused as to who should have a breast lift and who needs a breast reduction. A breast lift is right for someone who comes in and tells me that in a bra they’re happy with their volume it’s just that out of a bra everything has dropped down and they just want them lifted to retain a beautiful, natural result. Others want a breast lift and at the same time they feel they’re too big in a bra, that they want to be smaller, and for those patients a breast reduction is the way to go. Now, there’s a third group of women who want the lift and they want to be larger. That would be a breast lift with an augmentation and I have a separate video about that if it’s something you’re interested in. Both breast lifts and breast reductions give great results. They’re terrific surgeries. They have easy recoveries. The only drawback to both of those procedures is the incisions and to understand why you need incisions you need to understand what’s happening over time. The skin envelope or the skin brassiere stretches allowing the breast itself to drop. In both the procedures the excess skin is removed in order to reshape the skin envelope and hold the breast in the right position. The way we do that is by removing the excess skin. The incisions for these surgeries typically typically are what we consider to be an anchor-shaped incision meaning it goes around the nipple and areola, down the middle and then under the breast. The important thing is to realize is that the incision around the nipple and areola heals nearly invisibly as everyone has two different colored skins coming together there and it really camouflages it beautifully. The other thing to think about is that the incision under the breast is really never seen because it’s under the breast. It is the incision that runs down the middle that is the important one. This is the one that will be visible until it is faded and it does take an entire year for that to happen. Having said that, if you talk to people, really just a few weeks after the surgery, when they look in the mirror, they look so much better with their beautiful shape the fact that they temporarily have a little bit of a line here becomes a non-issue for them. Some women are really very large when they undergo a breast reduction. This has some of the highest satisfaction rates of any surgery we do in plastic surgery. It’s somewhere around 95 or 98 percent of women say they would do it again and they would recommend it. The reason for this is that there are really many benefits to the procedure. Not only are the breasts lifted and reshaped so that cosmetically they look better but back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, grooving of the shoulders from the bra straps, rashes under the breast all go away and women find it easier to buy clothing and exercise. All these factors combine to give it the highest satisfaction rate of any surgery we do. Please take some time to look at my before and after photographs. See what I mean by beautiful, natural results. If a breast lift or breast reduction is something you’re interested in, please contact my office for your own personal consultation. Thank you.