Breast Implant Surgery – How to choose between Implants. Adrian Richards, Leading Plastic Surgeon provides valuable information on how to choose your implants for breast implant surgery. More information on Breast Enlargement can be obtained by calling 01844 214362.

Breast Implant Surgery – How to Choose Between Them

Hello. My name’s Adrian Richards, and today I’m going to be talking a little bit about variations of implant. We talked a little bit about the difference between teardrop shape and round implants before. Now, I’m going to be talking a little bit about the actual variations in shapes within the round implants.

Twenty years ago, when I started doing breast implantation, there were really only three or four types of implants. Now there are over 250 sizes, different heights, different base widths, different shapes. I’m going to talk a little bit about how you choose what’s best for you.

First of all, just look at some round implants. Now, you can see these implants are actually all of a very similar volume. They’re 310 cc average volume, which is a fairly average volume of a breast implant. This is a moderate projection implant. You can see it’s much flatter than this one which is a full height implant. This one which is an extra height implant, and it’s quite a different shape from the flatter one.

How do you choose which one’s best for you? The basic thing is it depends on your chest dimensions. What we do, is we measure the base of your breast with our calliper. Base of your breast would typically be 12 to 13 centimetres. We then minus your natural breast tissue. That’s using the pinch technique. If your base is 13 centimetres, your pinch, which takes in two folds of skin, remember. You can say that’s from the inner and outer aspect is 2 centimetres. Your base is 13, pinch is 2, that means you need an implant of 13 minus 2 centimetres in diameter, 11 centimetres. So we ascertain that, because what we don’t want to do, we want to give you a good cleavage but we don’t want to be too wide that you start getting unanatomical and unaesthetic if the breast implants comes out too far laterally. You need the right breast implant for you to give you the optimal result.

Once we’ve ascertained the right base width, then we need to make a decision. Do you want very natural appearance, in which case you’ll go for medium projection? Do you want a more rounded appearance, in which case you go for a full projection? Or do you want more dramatic, which is the extra projection?

In my practice, I typically perform over 250 breast implants a year. The majority of people probably 60% to 70% would go for the full projection. People who want to be very subtle and want to raise a gentle breast augmentation tend to go for the medium height, a medium projection. People who want more of a dramatic look go for the extra high.

Again, just to summarise, the base width of the implant is governed by your chest diameters. Then we have a discussion about the projection you would prefer. Again, it’s very similar with shaped implants. Remember, if you’ve got under 2 centimetres of pinch in the upper part of the breast, we tend to think shaped implants because we want to create the natural appearance of the breast and, again, you can either go for low projection shaped implant. This is the top, flat here, shaped here. Or you can go for a much higher projection, much shorter height and higher projection.

Again, it’s really a very important, probably the most important thing about breast augmentation is number one, to decide the plane, under or over the muscle. Then to really spend a lot of time looking at the types of implants, shapes of implants, and even within the teardrop or round families, the different projections and heights, to really try to make sure that you get the best possible result. Thank you.