Breast Implant Surgery – How to Choose the Size and Shape for you

Mr Adrian Richards of Aurora Clinics explains how to choose the size and shape of your implants according to your body figure for a more natural look. To book your FREE consultation with our specialist breast surgeon or to find out more information on Breast Enlargement procedure, please call 01844 214362.

Breast Implant Surgery – How to Choose the Size and Shape for You

Hello. My name is Adrian Richards, and today I’m going to be talking a little bit about how you select the basic different types of implants which are either round implants or teardrop shaped implants.

So, this is a round implant. You can see from the cross-section, this bit goes against the chest wall, the flat section, and then from the cross-section, you can see a round implant is sort of dome shaped upward. So any way you turn it, it will still be domed. A teardrop shaped implant, on the other hand, this is obviously the upper bit facing your chin, and this is the lower bit facing your tummy button, is much flatter in this portion here and much more curved to simulate the natural appearance of the breast.

So, both implants have a lot of similarities. Both are textured. That means they’re slightly furry. The reason we use textured implants is because they’ve been shown to have a much lower rate of capsular contracture than smooth implants, which we used 20 years ago. Capsular contracture is where the body walls off the implant and they can go hard, which occurs in about less than 3% of cases with these latest textured implants.

So we’ve got a shaped implant, round implant. Now, how do you choose which one is best for you? Well, basically, shaped implants tend to be used with people with less natural breast tissue. So the test is again the calliper test, and what you need to do is measure the amount of natural breast tissue you’ve got. So we do this with a calliper, measuring your natural breast tissue in the upper part of the breast. So when we measure that, we’re actually taking in two skin thicknesses, so two thicknesses of the breast tissue.

So if we measure this as over two centimetres, that means that you’ve got one centimetre of natural breast tissue covering the implant. So, if your pinch is over two centimetres, we tend to think along the lines of a round implant. If you’ve got under two centimetres of natural breast tissue, we tend to think along the lines of a shaped implant.

Now, what’s the reason for that? The reason for that is if you’ve got over two centimetres of natural pinch, that’s one centimetre of natural breast tissue, you’ve already got reasonable breast volume and probably a reasonable breast shape. So all we’re aiming to do is augment what you’ve got. So we tend to use a round implant, which actually, when you sit up, when you’re vertical, does tend to go slightly teardrop shaped anyway. The advantages of a round implant is there’s no real risk of implant rotation, because even if the implant rotates a little bit, you’re not going to cause a problem with the shape of the breast.

A teardrop shaped implant, as I said, is used for people with less breast tissue, with under two centimetres of thickness. The reason for that is what we need to do in that case is really create the breast shape. So in that scenario, we’d use a shaped implant, which gives us the full appearance of the breast. Now there is a slightly increased risk of rotation of the implant. So you can see, if the implant rotates a little bit, it can distort the appearance of the breast. This is fortunately very rare, but it can happen.

So again, just to summarise, both implants, textured, furry. Both contain the latest cohesive silicone. Round implants tend to be used with people with some natural breast tissue, over two centimetres pinch in the upper pole. That means one centimetre of natural breast tissue. Shaped implants tend to be used with people with less than two centimetres of natural breast tissue in the upper pole, because we need to create the normal anatomy, the attractive appearance of the breast in those cases.

So I hope that’s clarified which way you should go. In the next episode, I’m going to be talking about within the families of round and shaped implants there’s an awful lot of variation. I’ll talk a little bit about how you select the right implant for you from either one of these families. Thank you.