Breast Implant Surgical Procedures

Breast implantation, or medically termed as mammoplasty, is a procedure to implant a breast implant device within the breast tissue. There are three purposes of this breast surgery: (1) reconstruction, if the breast tissues were damaged by trauma, disease, or other accidents; (2) revision, to fix up the result of other breast surgeries performed previously; (3) cosmetic purposes, to give the breasts an aesthetically better look.

Five Kinds of Incisions

Breast implant emplacement is performed with five (5) types of surgical incisions:

There are five kinds of surgical incisions in this breast surgery:

• Inframammary. This is the incision created around the infra-mammary fold (IMF). This incision will give maximum access to most areas within the breast tissues. Because of that, this incision is usually made if the surgeons want to do an emplacement of the silicone-gel breast implants. However, this incision leaves a thicker, more visible scars onto the breast skin.
• Periareolar. This is the incision created in a border line of the areola. This incision will give a better depth-look into the breast tissue right if inframammary incisions need to be adjusted in certain ways. This incision is also necessary to be created if the surgery includes a breast lift (mastopexy). Unlike the inframammary incision, periareolar incision does not enable surgeons to emplace silicone gel implants due to the small size of the incision. Lucky that this incision is less visible than the inframammary incision because it is located around the areola’s border.
• Transaxillary. This is the incision created in the armpit (axilla). This incision will create a dissection tunnels from where surgeons can emplace the implants. The emplacement can be done both bluntly or with the help of video microcamera, and therefore produces less or even no scars on the breast skin. However, this incision is less acurate in positioning the implant device. That’s why, transaxillary incision in mammoplasty is mostly revised with an inframammary or periareolar incision.
• Transumbilical. This is the incision created at the navel. This incision is actually less common because it creates a dissection tunnels upwards from the bust. It is also so much trickier to position the breast implant device more accurately, although it creates less or even no scars. Transumbilical incision is not suitable to placing silicone gel implants within the breast tissue because of its inaccuracy nature. Moreover, silicone gel implants cannot be inserted through an incision this small because they are more incompressible.
• Transabdominal. This is mostly similar to transumbilical incision. This incision creates tunnels from the abdominal incision to the implant tissue. Mostly, an abdominoplasty is undergone simultaneously with this incision.

Breast Implant Emplacement

By definition, breast implant emplacement is a cross-sectional plan of two different implantantions: subglandular breast prosthesis implantation and submuscular breast prosthesis implantations. There are four different procedures can be apply to perform a breast implant emplacement to the implant pocket within the breast tissue.

• Subglandular. The emplacement is done onto the retromammary area, which is located between the gland and the pectoralis muscle. This emplacement method gives the most good-looking results. However, subglandular position often shows up some ripples and wrinkles, especially in patients with thin pectoral tissue size. This emplacement procedure also gives higher rate of capsular contracture incidence.
• Subfascial. The emplacement is done under the fascia of the pectoralis muscle. Actually, subfascial emplacement is a variation from subglandular position. This emplacement method is still under debate, because some surgeons said that this emplacement method gives a more vast coverage of implantation and better position sustainability, while other surgeons were against this opinion.
• Subpectoral. This emplacement is done under the pectoralis muscle. Because this emplacement can only be done after the surgeon wears off the attachments from the inferior muscle, the upper part of the implant is put under the pectoralis muscle while the lower part is in the subglandular area. Although in some patients the possibility of the implants moving from its initial position is a bit higher, subpectoral emplacement cover the maximum area of the implant and allows the lower part of the implant to be expanded.
• Submuscular. This emplacement is done under the pectoralis muscle, similar to subpectoral emplacement. But, submuscular emplacement does not require the surgeons to wear off the attachments of the inferior muscle. Coverage of this emplacement method can be reached maximally by wearing off the lateral muscle from the chest (the serratus muscle, the pectoralis minor muscle, or the two). In most breast surgery, submuscular emplacement method gives the best result to the breast implants.

Post-surgical recovery

Scars from breast augmentation surgery usually appear 6 weeks after the surgery. It then fades in several months. However, patients can go back to their normal daily life just in a week after surgery as long as they do not do hard physical activities. However, longer recovery time can happen for patients of submuscular placement breast augmentation. These patients can only be back to their daily activities after more than 6 weeks. This is because the incisions of the chest muscles takes longer period to be healed. During this recovery time, it is recommended for the patient to do some light exercises on their arms. These arm exercises are good to let go the pain within the breast tissue. Sometimes, analgesic medication catheters are used to alleviate the pain. Some other advanced techniques of breast implantation enables the patient to recover a lot faster. About 95 percent of women undergoing these techniques can resume their normal lifestyle just in 24 hours with barely any helps of bandages, catheters, and other medical devices.

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