Breast Lift Surgery in LA

Breast Lift Surgery in LA
Breast lift surgery, or mastopexy, is performed on women who have sagging breasts. This is commonly performed after completing child bearing. The breast becomes engorged during pregnancy and then involutes after breast-feeding is completed. Like an overblown balloon that eventually loses air, the breast skin "stretches out" and often loses its elasticity, and the breast volume shrinks.  It can also happen with fluctuations in weight as well as with aging that results in weakness in skin elasticity. 

There are three general skin design patterns for mastopexy.  These are based upon the amount of skin that needs to be removed, the distance the nipple areola complex needs to be lifted to place it in an aesthetically pleasing position, the amount of breast tissue that needs to be removed or repositioned, and finally the volume, if any, that needs to be restored with a breast implant (see the breast augmentation section).  
The three more common skin patterns include:

1. Wise Pattern breast lift - which looks like an inverted –“T” or an anchor after final closure.
2. Vertical breast lift - which looks like a “lollipop” incision.
3. Circumareolar breast lift - (sometimes referred to as a Benelli breast lift) which ends up with an incision along the border of the areola.  

So to summarize, the Wise pattern places incisions along the inframammary border of the breast, a vertical incision from the fold up to the areola, and an incision around the border of the areola.  The vertical lift eliminates the inframammary incision, and the circumareolar breast lift eliminates both the vertical and inframammary incision.  Dr.  will commonly employ a vertical lift technique (a modified LeJour technique) that minimizes the amount of scarring on the breast using a "lollipop-type" pattern that encompasses a circular incision around the areola with a lower breast vertical incision. This eliminates the use of a transverse incision along the lower breast fold that is placed as part of a more traditional "anchor type" procedure.  The circumareolar breast lift only employs an incision around the areola.  This procedure is for a very limited patient population that does not require the nipple areola complex to move too much.
The tissue that supports the blood supply to the nipple areola complex can usually be brought on a leash of tissue commonly referred to as a pedicle from superiorly, inferiorly, medially, or laterally. This technique is usually reserved for patients with moderate breast ptosis (droop) and reasonably good skin elasticity.  For this reason, most massive weight loss patients would not be good candidates for this technique because of the poor skin quality.  But, for the majority of breast lift patients, this technique is an excellent choice.  For patients with poor skin quality and with significant breast ptosis, a Wise pattern skin incision would probably be most beneficial to achieve the desired result.  Dr.  will combine breast augmentation with a breast lift for those patients that desire an increase in volume as well as a lift. In many cases, Dr. will limit the incision from this procedure by using either a "lollipop-type" pattern or a pattern designed only around the areola (circumareolar), further limiting the incisions. For massive weight loss patients, Dr.  has used all three types of skin incision designs to achieve nice results for his patients.  Sometimes a breast augmentation alone can be performed to lift the breast for minor sagging.