Your consultation with your plastic surgeon is a great opportunity to learn about your breast augmentation options and learn how you can achieve your desired look. These are the four key topics to cover to get the most out of your consultation.
1. Discuss your desired look
Let your surgeon know exactly what kind of look you want. Fake or natural? Proportional to your shoulders and hips? Breasts looking dominant, or breasts looking diminutive? Round with the noticeable implant edges, or blended inconspicuously into your body? Do you want the upper part of your breast to be bulging, or do you prefer it straight, or perhaps dipping inwards? Would you like just enough to look more feminine or to fill out breasts emptied by babies or weight loss? Or something that is eye-catching, and gets noticed?
2. Exam and measurements
Your surgeon will examine and measure you in order to determine the extent to which your wishes can be fulfilled. Every woman's breast skin has a certain volume that it can hold. If you fill it up beyond that, in the short term the edges of the implant will be visible through your skin, it will look more round, and the upper pole will bulge. Over the long term, the pressure will make your skin stretch and it will compress and thin your breast tissue. If you are already a little droopy, the heavier the implant, the more it will sag. If you fill it less, it will not look full, the upper part may be concave, and it may not be proportionally shaped.
3. Reconcile your "wishes with your tissues"
After understanding your desires and examining you, you and your surgeon will reconcile your "wishes with your tissues." Do you want to be big and natural looking, yet your skin is already tight and full? Do you want to be small, round, firm and perky, yet your breasts are wide, loose, a little droopy, and empty? Do you want large, natural looking breasts to balance out relatively large shoulders or hips, yet you have such a narrow chest with small breasts so that an implant large enough to balance your hips would look fake? Most often, women have a sense about what works on their body, and so most often their request is attainable. But occasionally their wishes and tissues are not in sync, and they will need to choose what will be their priority, e.g. becoming a certain size, or remaining relatively natural.
4. Visualize what you will look like
Lastly, the surgeon will help you to visualize what you will look like after your augmentation. Doctors want you to know ahead of time what you will look like; there should be no anxiety about size. They want no one to ever wake up bigger or smaller than they were expecting. Speaking in cup sizes is not helpful; patients frequently wear the wrong size, and bra manufacturers vary in what they call each size.
Some doctors can take a 3-D photo of your body and simulate what you will look like with the implant size you selected. You can do this both undressed as well as with a bra on. Second, your doctor will give you a "sizer implant" to put inside a non-padded bra, and you can put your clothes back on over it to see roughly how you will look. These visualization techniques aren't precise, but they will give you an idea of what you'll look like after your surgery.
This article is brought to us by Dr. Teitelbaum of Santa Monica, CA.
