BREAST REDUCTION

This tells us a great deal about the physical and psychological discomfort experienced by women with gigantomastia. Excessive breast size stigmatizes a young woman socially. Many soon develop a pattern of dress and posture, which attempts to camoflage their unwanted feature. Large breasts are a physical impediment limiting active sports or dance participation. The chronic weight begins to wear grooves into the soft tissue at the shoulder strap lines and may even produce upper back and neck pain. Woman hate them in spite of anything men may believe. Health insurance carriers often share this 'male' bias, making insurance coverage for surgery difficult to obtain. Reduction mammoplasty is viewed as cosmetic in nature rather than reconstructive.

Fortunately surgical correction can be readily performed during a 24-hour hospital stay. Patients recover quickly as healing from surgery is not overly painful or physically limiting. Typical patients are strongly motivated, making for rapid return to normal activity. Reduction is done as a partial surgical removal of breast fat, gland and skin. No deeper body cavities or muscle layers are involved. In perfoming the surgery I use an "inverted T"; pattern modified by my own design, which I feel produces the most natural and aesthetically pleasing breast form. The incisions reside below the inframammary fold and circle the normal areola. The great majority of patients will heal with favorable blending of these scars after a year. I have not had a patient who felt breast reduction was not worth the final appearance of her scars. Characteristically, women having reduction surgery in their third decades or later wish they had done it ten or more years sooner.