Breast Augmentation Down Time
Beverly Hills Breast Augmentation for beautiful breasts from breast implants. Start to finish…
One of the most frequent questions I get asked in my Beverly Hills and Glendora office about breast augmentation is down time from surgery. The best way to answer this I’ve found is to walk the patient through the process. Generally, breast enlargement surgery takes about an hour and a half. Women are asleep with general anesthesia and will go home the same day of surgery with specific wraps around the upper pole of the breast. I generally see patients the next day in the office and then again the following week. During the second visit, women are instructed to massage their breasts. Massaging can accomplish two things. One, it can reduce the rate of capsular contracture which is a hardening of the tissue around the implant, and two, it can perhaps encourage the breast implants to drop. They are also instructed on how to wrap their breasts to encourage implants to facilitate this dropping. When do breast implants drop? It really depends. See this post that addresses this question.
Regarding exercising, I generally ask women to not do anything vigorous for at least two weeks after breast augmentation surgery. The reason for this is that you do not want their heart rate or blood pressure going up and the postoperative setting, because this can cause a bleeding episode inside the breasts. With a submuscular breast implant placement where part of the muscle is surgically detached from sternum, it is critically important to make sure patients understand to take it easy with their arms. I generally ask patients to not lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk for the first few weeks. They are instructed to not go to the gym for at least four to six weeks. However, women can return to the normal job within one week of surgery as long as they are not doing any strenuous activity.
In addition, I instruct patients after breast augmentation that I do not want their arms above the level of their shoulders for the first two weeks. Thus, I ask them to wear button-down shirts to make it easy to remove their clothes without violating this rule. Overall, recovery for breast augmentation
is also very uneventful and easy with no major inconveniences. It’s a fantastic operation for women who either want a breast enlargement.
Dr. Tim Neavin is a board-certified plastic surgeon located in Beverly Hills, California.
