Breast augmentation is one of the most commonly performed cosmetic procedures in the United States, but in certain patients, particularly those who have very tight skin or want to have implants that are bigger than the anatomy allows, many times after the surgery the implant will look high. As a matter of fact, because the skin needs to stretch to accommodate the implant size, your chest is going to look like a bodybuilder’s: very tight, unnatural, and many times not very pretty. But all of this will settle within the first month.
One of the things I recommend to help the breasts settle is breast massage. I already discussed this in another video, which you can watch after you finish this educational video. But what I want to talk about here is using what I call a breast strap to help accommodate the breast implants. The breast strap is a band that goes over the breasts and behind your back, and the strap pushes the breast implants down constantly. This will help stretch the implants, and during the first couple of weeks when there are no scars around the implants, it will help the breasts settle in the appropriate place. The problem is that if we do not start pushing the implant down, once the scar forms, it is going to be very hard to push the implant into a more appropriate location. For example, when we put the implant under the muscle, the muscle tends to contract and the space tends to be tight.
If you look at this diagram and we assume that the circle is the implant, the implant is going to tend to ride high after it is placed through an incision on the breast. With time, the implant will slowly descend, but in cases where this process is not occurring naturally, using the breast strap is a good way of expediting this process to get more natural-looking breasts.