Hi my name is Alana Weatherly I am one of the PA’s here at Florida Plastic Surgery Group. Today I will be discussing a breast surgery referred to as a breast lift with fat grafting also known as a composite mastopexy. We offer this procedure here at our practice for patients who are looking to have their breasts lifted. Most often their nipple position is lower than they would like so we reposition it at a correct height and then we add fat to the areas to give it a fuller look without the use of an implant. The fat is achieved from usually the belly hips or flanks by liposuction. In the operating room we process that fat sterilely and then inject it around the areas to give it a fuller look without adding an implant so it’s all your own natural tissue. Typically, when you come into our office, you’ll have a consultation with the physician at that point you’ll go over your surgical plan, your goals, post-operative expectations where your surgery will be and meet with a surgery scheduler. If you decide to move forward, at the surgery center where most of these procedures are done it’ll be an outpatient surgery. The day of surgery you will go home the same day, you will be there all day. A few hours before surgery you will arrive, about an hour and a half in surgery and then a couple hours before you leave to go home. At that point in time you will need to have a driver that takes you to and from your surgery and stay with you that night. At the end of your surgery you’ll have surgical tape similar to steri strips placed on all of your incisions. Depending on where we get the fat from, most often it’s from your abdominal area you will have a surgical binder to provide some gentle compression as well as a surgical bra that you will wear up until the time of your appointment. At your first appointment we will remove the steri-strips, take a look at all the incisions and ensure that everything as healing as we expect. You will continue wearing the sports bra but we’ll go over all that information with you at that first post-up appointment. Most often we discontinue or tell you that you don’t need to wear the abdominal binder anymore. After this procedure it’s very common to have an area of the breast that may be more swollen than the other. Slight asymmetries may be present meaning one side might look a little bit of a bulge where the fat grafting is still healing or more bruising versus one breast than the other. We do expect that during the healing process sometimes the skin will even look tight or shiny. These are all things you can expect for the first few weeks after your surgery and usually it greatly decreases and everything settles out around week three to week four. Following this surgery, we want to make sure that you’re avoiding any physical activity or exercise for about three weeks from your procedure. We will go over further post-op care at that first post-op appointment where we’ll also provide you with written instructions. After any surgery there’s certain things that we want you to do or maintain. We want you to be up and moving around your house. You should be resting but not on bed rest. Normal daily activities are perfectly fine just avoiding any heavy lifting and remember to stay hydrated, choosing good fluids avoiding high caffeine drinks, energy drinks, and alcoholic beverage while you’re healing. Make sure you are getting enough protein in your diet, that is going to help and be beneficial. After any surgery we recommend that patients are not smoking, that includes before surgery and after surgery as well smoking greatly decreases your body’s ability to heal and we don’t want that while you’re going through this entire process. There is certain red flag symptoms that we would want to know about. These things would warrant a phone call to our office; if you’re experiencing fevers, nausea, vomiting uncontrolled pain, excessive bleeding, if one breast is significantly larger than the other breast, chest pain or any other worsening symptoms please call our office. At that time, we will triage the phone call and let you know if we need to bring you into our office any sooner, let you know if it’s just a normal healing process or further give you instructions or actions of what needs to be taken. We are here for you! Any questions comments or concerns please give us a call, don’t hesitate we’d like to hear from you sooner rather than later. Thank you for choosing Florida Plastic Surgery Group!
Alana Weatherly, PA-C discusses Post-Op/Discharge Instructions for a Breast Lift w/ Fat Grafting
