Breast augmentation is a highly successful operation that was performed about 330,000 times in 2007 in the United States. While many wome desire breast enlargement, they may be fearful of the amount of pain after surgery and that they may have a long recovery until they can get back to their normal activities. Breast augmentation, however, should involve none of these problems today and our goal as plastic surgeons is to get you back to a near normal schedule within days of the surgery.
The most common method of breast augmentation, known as submuscular implant placement, involves lifting up the pectoralis major muscle (chest muscle) and putting the implant underneath it. It is important to realize that the breast implant is never completely under the muscle or it would be positioned too high and the nipple would be pointing downward. Nonetheless, recovery after a breast augmentation is really muscular and represents nothing more than a big pulled muscle.. From a physical therapy standpoint, how do you recover from a pulled muscle? The answer is…..use it and use it early! Moving and stretching of the pectoralis muscle through arm exercises is the key to a faster recovery after breast augmentation. You can’t hurt the breast implant by using your arm and chest muscles and early movement will not be responsible for an implant moving out of the pocket and being malpositioned. This is what I call a Rapid Recovery Breast Augmentation program.
I start my breast augmentation patients on range of motion arm exercises beginning the night of surgery as well as 800mg of Ibuprofen. The goal is to get patients off narcotic pain medication in 24 hours, if possible, and be able to get out of the house for dinner or shopping the next day. While not every patient achieves this exact timeline, this aggressive physical therapy approach helps make a breast augmentation recovery easier than ever.
There are some variables in breast augmentation that will cause more or less pain and recovery and they are the following:
1) The larger the breast implant placed, the more pocket dissection that needs to be done. This
will cause more pain after surgery. In very large breast implants, expect more pain and
swelling.
2) The tighter the breast skin, the more pain the patient will likely have. Women that have
loose breast skin and sagging breast tissue seem to have less discomfort after surgery.
3) The transaxillary (armpit) approach, which I use for saline implants, seems to cause
slightly more pain than other incisional approaches as more pectoralis muscle is being
dissected and lifted.
Regardless of these slight differences in breast augmentation techniques, aggressive physical therapy will make for a more Rapid Recovery Breast Augmentation!
Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana