Breast Reduction FAQ

Another common question that I often get asked is will a breast reduction surgery alter my ability to breastfeed? And that is really patient specific. The best number we can come up with the literature, in the literature today is about a 50 50 chance of losing the ability to breastfeed. Now, a woman has to take in consideration that this was measured on patients that had a child, breastfed, then had the breast reduction surgery and then got pregnant again.

Now, some women are not able to breastfeed by nature. So if a woman is in her childbearing age, I always say there is the potential loss or there is a potential risk of losing the ability to breastfeed. But if you undergo surgery and then later become pregnant and you can't breastfeed, it's really impossible to say if it was for surgery or just your, by nature, given inability to breastfeed.

A woman in childbearing age, I also say that you have to take these risk factors like loss of nipple sensation or loss of the, potential loss of the ability to breastfeed and weigh it against the benefits. And some of the major benefits of this operation, even in a younger age is really to potentially be more active afterwards, to have less pain in their neck and shoulders.

And for most women it's just such a great experience to just be able to walk in a store and buy any bra off the rack without having to do a special order for a special bra that are usually very expensive. So just to be able to wear a normal bra or even to wear no bra at all and to feel very comfortable with their clothes, but also without their clothes is a major life improvement.

I perform breast reduction surgery of all ages as young as 16 years of age all the way up into the patient's 70 years of age. So there's really no age definition for this or when it is the right time to do it. It's a very individual and personal decision, but it's important to inform yourself about the benefits of it and not just to see the potential risks of surgery.

Most of the time, I hear from my patients afterwards, the only regret that they have is that they haven't done it already years ago.

The breast reduction recovery process is, according to my patients, often easier than what they envisioned. As you may know, I not only do breast reduction surgery, but I also perform other procedures like tummy tucks, light blue suction, facelifts. And my patients frequently say, or it's the only operation they say, that the recovery was way easier than they envisioned.

So, I tell my patients that they're being placed in a bra post operatively and for the first two weeks you can only lift about what is equivalent to a gallon of milk. After two weeks, I start easing my patients back into their daily routine. Of course, it's a very individual approach because there's a difference if your exercise program is walking on a treadmill very leisurely.

Or if you're participating in boot camp and doing very strenuous exercises or weight lifting or if you're an, you know, active runner or any type of those things. So it's a very individual approach for strenuous activity. You have to refrain for that from about six to eight weeks. And every patient is followed on an individual basis about their wound healing, their scar appearance.

And sometimes you know, a, a more consideration or keeping a patient a little bit longer refrained from certain activity is necessary. But overall, the recovery process is fairly simple. All sutures are dissolvable, meaning you don't have to come in for suture removal. I don't use drain tubes they're not necessary to use in breast reduction surgery the way I do it.

And the dressing change after surgery is very easy at home and very easily doable. Some restrictions are post operatively of what bra to use for the first three months. free to do whatever you want from an activity level, what type of bra to wear. And in order to really achieve or one of the points to really help achieve a good outcome is to follow those instructions post operatively for the first three months after surgery.