At Advanced Concepts in Plastic Surgery in Sacramento, CA once the patient has decided to have a breast augmentation or breast lift (mastopexy) and augmentation and have selected either silicone implants or saline implants, the most important question is what size should the breast implants be?  This is a very important question since most women are afraid of going too big, too obvious or frankly, looking like porn stars.  They want to bigger breasts but they don’t want really BIG breasts.

So how can we figure out what they’re thinking?  First we ask what size they are and what size they would like to be.  Usually this is one to 2 cups sizes up, which is quite possible.  Going from an A cup to a double D is not very reasonable or realistic.  This big of a change can cause all sorts of deformities, wrinkles and even capsular contractor.

As a rule of thumb, a cup size is 100 to 200 CC depending on size and shape of the plastic surgery patient wanting breast augmentation.  There is no absolute number.  So the next step is to use sizers.  These are silicone implants that fit in a bra and come in various different sizes.  They come in CC’s not cup sizes therefore they would go 200, 250, 300, etc. rather than A, B, C.  They are not a perfect fit but are close to the end result.  More importantly they give visual feedback on the patient’s own body with the cup size bra that they desire.

There are now plastic surgery imaging computers available, but so far the reviews are mixed for getting a better preview.  There may be better ones on the way but at this point in time, Advanced Concepts in Plastic Surgery has not embraced these methods.

Lastly the patient looks at photos from Playboy magazine that we have accumulated.  She selects one or two that represent what she is looking for.  The reason we do this is not to have someone look like a girl on page 37 but to have a visual that we both recognize.  Very rarely a plastic surgery patient will say she doesn’t want to be too big and then shows a photo that is quite the opposite.  Or she may want to be big and show us a picture of a model with small breasts.  If that happens the dialogue continues until we figure out together what she wants from her breast augmentation.

In breast augmentation revision cases, or severe asymmetry, there is one more technique we can use before performing breast augmentation plastic surgery.  That is the use of internal sizers.  These are basically sterile empty balloons that we can fill with salt water at predetermined volumes.  We can do this while the patient is asleep and then sit up on the operating table to see which volumes give the best shape and symmetry.  The sizers are then taken out and permanent implants are put in.

These techniques work well for my plastic surgery patients in Sacramento who are seeking larger, fuller breasts from breast augmentation or breast lift (maxopexy) to get the result they’re looking for even if they weren’t quite sure themselves just what they wanted originally.