Does Breast Reduction Affect Breast Feeding

Patients who undergo breast reduction surgery frequently are seeking relief from physical symptoms caused by the excessive weight of large breasts.

Breast reduction usually can solve these problems as well as improve the size and shape of your breasts. Following breast reduction, your breasts will be more proportional to the rest of your body, and your clothes will fit you better.

Breast reduction can be performed at any age, but plastic surgeons usually recommend waiting until breast development has stopped. Childbirth and breast-feeding may have significant and unpredictable effects on the size and shape of your breasts.

Nevertheless, many women decide to undergo breast reduction before having children and feel that they can address any subsequent changes later. If you plan to breast-feed in the future, you should discuss this with your plastic surgeon.

Although the goals of breast reduction and breast uplift procedures are different, the procedures will be discussed together because the preoperative preparation, surgical incision, and postoperative course are quite similar.

In both procedures, incisions are designed to create a more youthful and natural shaped breast. In both procedures this involves elevating the nipple/areolar complex from a lower, more droopy position, to a more natural position on the center of the breast mound.

In a breast reduction procedure, breast tissue is resected in addition to the excess skin, thus reducing the final volume of the breast while elevating the nipple/areolar complex In an uplift procedure, skin alone is resected while the nipple/areolar complex is positioned in a more elevated location.

Occasionally, the patient may desire a small breast implant at the time of an uplift procedure if the patient perceives that the breasts are not only too droopy, but too small as well.

There is no evidence that breast uplift or reduction surgery alters the possibility of developing breast cancer. It will still be necessary for you to examine yourself monthly for breast lumps and to undergo mammography as suggested by your personal physician. Many plastic surgeons suggested that all patients 35 years of age or older obtain a mammogram prior to elective breast surgery.

With the breast uplift procedure, no incisions are made within the substance of the breast. While reducing a breast, incisions will naturally course across breast ducts, but the ducts immediately beneath the nipple are left intact and usually such a patient would be able to breast feed if this becomes desirable in the future.

Although not all women are able to breast feed even before a breast operation, these procedures by themselves should not rule out the ability to breast feed at a later date.