This blog topic is to answer a question from a patient who I did a breast augmentation on a few years ago. Fastforward over a decade, two babies, and a bunch of breast feeding, she now wants to revisit her breasts. Maybe a little larger? Maybe lift?
Her question to me: “If I go with the lift option, does that make it harder for me to do a lift later on? I’m assuming I’ll get old and have even saggier boobs than I do now, at which point I’ll want a lift. I just want to make sure I’m not setting myself up for a harder boob situation to fix later.”
Great question and thoughts.
My answer?
- You can redo breast lifts. You just need to redo using the same technique, as the blood supply to the nipple areola complex needs to be preserved. So if you do my lollipop vertical breast lift surgery, the blood supply is superiomedial (the cleavage area), so you need to redo the lollipop. Sadly when I have patients who come to me with a prior anchor inferior pedicle wise pattern breast lift or reduction, I have to redo that style to preserve the blood supply.
- Is there a negative to redoing a lift? Other than having to do a surgery again, there is not a negative. Any surgery has risks of bleeding, blood supply, scar, sensory change. Minimizing surgery helps to minimize those risks.
- There are benefits of lifts. If you see my blogs on breast reductions and the awesome posture, neck pain, back pain, and other benefits, a HUGE reason for the improvements is not the reduction in the weight of the breasts, it is because of the LIFT. Not only do breast lifts make your breasts cute and perky, less bouncy when you exercise, and less of an issue for your bras to support, you get those benefits in neck/back/shoulder.
- The big tradeoff is scar. You are getting lifted, rounder, perkier breasts, but you will have a scar that goes around the areola and a vertical line on the breast.
So the choice is yours. Yes, sadly as you age you should expect that you will get older (but older women are the bomb!) and your breasts will sag, particularly with the changes around menopause. But the biggest hit to breasts tends to be major weight changes, pregnancy, and breast feeding. Those are behind you. Doing two lifts is not a common thing. Know that if you want to redo the lift you can.