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Breast augmentation is among the most popular cosmetic surgery procedures, with very high patient-satisfaction ratings. It’s also one of the most customizable plastic surgeries that offers implant size, type, shape, and placement options.

How should you make those choices to get the best results? And what can you do before and after your surgery to ensure the best possible outcome?

Choose Your Plastic Surgeon Carefully

It takes a skilled and experienced plastic surgeon, and one with good consultation skills, to help you make the right choices and to deliver excellent results. Choose a board-certified plastic surgeon who has extensive experience with breast surgery. Look at before-and-after pictures of the surgeon’s breast augmentation patients to see that he or she has tailored the procedure to different body types for natural-looking results. Pay special attention to before-and-after pictures of patients with body types similar to your own.

Make Good Use of Your Consultation

Do your best to explain the results you hope to achieve. Bring up any particular concerns you may have—your ability to breastfeed after augmentation, for example, or the importance of continuing with a specific sport or physical activity. Listen carefully to what the surgeon has to tell you, including their suggestions regarding implant type, size, and placement based on your physique and your desires.

Choose the Right Implants

There’s no “right” breast implant for every woman. The best implants for you will depend on many factors: the size and shape of your breasts, the width of your chest, the balance of breast size with the rest of your body, and your lifestyle, to name a few.

Learn about your options by reading about them. Use your consultation with your plastic surgeon to understand the likely effects of different choices. Would silicone or saline implants be better for you? What about placing the implants behind or in front of the chest muscles? What size and shape of implant will give you the look you want? Ask if there’s a way to visualize the change, using 3D imaging, with different implant sizes and shapes to give you a preview of what to expect.

Your goal is to get it just right — neither too big nor too small. You don’t want to be back in a year or two asking about revision breast surgery to change the implant size.

Consider Combining Breast Augmentation with a Breast Lift

If your breasts are sagging, a breast augmentation alone is unlikely to correct the problem. Combining implants with a breast lift may give you better results. If this is a concern for you, be sure, in your consultation with the surgeon, to ask about combining the two procedures.

Take Good Care of Yourself in Recovery

You’ll play an essential role in enhancing your breast augmentation results by carefully following post-operative instructions and taking good care of yourself in recovery.

Your surgeon will give you specific instructions following your surgery, including what activities to avoid in the first few days (such and reaching and lifting), how to keep the incisions clean and free of infection, and how to help your breasts heal to their new form. Your doctor will probably instruct you to wear a surgical bra to minimize swelling and bruising and to avoid lying on your stomach until your breasts have fully healed. Eating healthy foods and getting plenty of rest will also promote healing and help ensure optimal results.

Follow all of these instructions, and don’t push yourself too hard or too early in the healing process. Be patient as you heal. It will take some time for swelling to disappear and for your breasts to settle into their final form.

Find Out More About Breast Augmentation in Orange County

Contact us today to schedule a consultation and find out whether breast augmentation may be right for you. We’ll answer your questions and explain your options. We have five Los Angeles area offices: in Orange, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Yorba Linda, and Newport Beach, CA.

The doctors at UCI Plastic Surgery are leaders in the field of cosmetic surgery. Through their teaching and lecturing roles at UCI, they stay current with state-of-the-art techniques and technology. Their advanced technical skills consistently produce better, more natural-looking results for their patients.