Breast Augmentation in Raleigh, NC
As a symbol of femininity and womanhood and a cornerstone of a woman’s silhouette, a woman’s breasts are integral to her sense of self — and breasts are as unique as the women they develop from.
Whether you are looking to increase the size of naturally small breasts or revamp your chest after the rigors of pregnancy and breastfeeding, breast augmentation surgery can help enhance and restore shape and sensuality to your bustline.
Raleigh’s Specialists in Plastic Surgery provide a collection of cosmetic breast surgeries to address your concerns and help achieve the look you’re seeking.
Why Should I Choose Specialists in Plastic Surgery for My Breast Augmentation
Raleigh’s Specialists in Plastic Surgery is known throughout North Carolina for offering the widest selection of breast augmentation and breast implant options — including saline implants and today’s highly advanced and popular anatomically shaped silicone gel breast implants.
Our board-certified plastic surgeons have over 75 years of combined experience in cosmetic plastic surgery and are often referred to by other doctors and physicians in Raleigh.
Before & After Photo Gallery
Photo GalleryAre Breast Implants Right for Me?
If you are healthy and don’t smoke but are dissatisfied with the shape, size, or position of your breasts, you may be a good candidate for breast augmentation.
Breast implant augmentation can:
- Increase breast size
- Balance breast appearance
- Make the body more proportionate
- Replenish fullness lost due to weight loss
- Address noticeable breast asymmetry
Breast augmentation — or breast enhancement — will make your breasts appear younger, fuller, and more proportionate to the rest of your body.
Although the surgery has many benefits, it is not right for every woman.
A consultation at our state-of-the-art Raleigh surgery center is the best way to determine if breast augmentation is suitable for you.
Are implants the right way to enhance your breasts?
What Are the Benefits of Breast Augmentation?
For many women, their breasts and their body image are intricately linked. Therefore, concerns regarding breast appearance can have far-reaching implications in terms of how a woman sees and perceives her overall figure.
After breast augmentation procedures, our Specialists in Plastic Surgery patients tell us how much they now enjoy buying new clothes, including bras and swimsuits. They take new pride in their curvier figure.
In fact, studies show that breast augmentation surgery has one of the highest satisfaction rates. Surveys performed by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons even reported that 98 percent of breast augmentation patients felt their surgery met or exceeded their expectations, and 90 percent of women felt the procedure increased their self-esteem.
See Your Potential Results Before Surgery With 3D Imaging
During your consultation with one of our board-certified plastic surgeons, we use our state-of-the-art VECTRA® 3D imaging to help design your breast augmentation. After capturing six photos simultaneously, the computer creates a 3D image that can be rotated and viewed from above or below.
With up-to-date information on breast implant sizes and shapes, the VECTRA® system visually approximates the changes in your appearance that can be expected after your breast augmentation.
If you would like to learn more about breast augmentation and how you can benefit, contact Raleigh’s Specialists in Plastic Surgery.
How Should I Prepare for Augmentation Surgery?
There isn’t any special preparation required for breast augmentation surgery with the team at Specialists in Plastic Surgery.
It is surgery, so you’ll need to stop taking any anti-inflammatory medications, blood thinners, aspirin, and most supplements for a few days prior to your procedure. If you smoke, you’ll need to stop for at least two weeks before and after your surgery, as smoking constricts the blood vessels, and this can hinder incision healing.
We will discuss these things — and what you can expect after your operation — with you during your consultation.
Breast enhancement surgeries do not involve a difficult recovery, so you don’t need to prepare for a long downtime; however, modifications to your day-to-day schedule during the initial days may be necessary.
Real Patient Testimonial
How Is Breast Augmentation Performed?
Breast augmentation is a highly customizable procedure, and your input is critical to this process.
During your consultation, you will discuss:
- Implant volume (measured in CCs)
- Implant shape (round or teardrop-shaped)
- Filling material (saline or silicone)
- Implant profile (to determine projection)
- Low profile to high profile
- Implant placement
- Above the muscle (subglandular)
- Below the muscle (submuscular)
- Incision placement
- Inframammary fold (breast crease)
- Periareolar (around the areola)
- Transaxillary (in the armpit)
At Raleigh’s Specialists in Plastic Surgery, you’ll have the choice of several different breast implant types, which come in a wide range of sizes.
Today’s breast implant enhancements are filled with saline or silicone gel, and each implant type offers distinct benefits. During your breast enhancement consultation, we can help you find a breast implant that will meet your needs and personal goals.
Before your breast surgery, general and/or local anesthesia is combined with sedation to make you comfortable.
Small incisions are made in locations decided upon by you and your doctor based on your consultation and which type of implant enhancement you are receiving. The incisions’ size and location will be discussed but typically includes the breast crease or under the areola.
Through the incision, a pocket is made behind or in front of the pectoral muscles— depending upon which placement is best for you.
The implant is then placed into the pocket and secured with sutures.
Will I Need a Breast Augmentation With Lift?
While breast implants help fill out the breasts and restore shape, they cannot lift significantly sagging breasts or remove sagging skin common with aging, pregnancy, and weight loss. Because of this, many women choose to add a breast lift to their breast augmentation to achieve optimal results.
This improves positioning and provides a more youthful contour by raising the breasts and restoring projection. This combination also allows for the nipple-areola complex to be raised.
Adding implants to a breast lift is not difficult as our surgeons can place the implants through incisions they’ve already made for the breast lift.
Can I Combine Breast Augmentation With Other Procedures?
Women commonly combine breast augmentation with other body contouring procedures.
Common procedures include:
- Liposuction on the lower abdomen or flanks
- Tummy tuck surgery (abdominoplasty)
- Mommy Makeover surgery (which combines all of the above)
If you’d like to combine procedures, you can discuss this with your plastic surgeon during the consultation.
We do not advise undergoing surgical and non-surgical procedures simultaneously. If you are looking for both, your treatments will be scheduled separately.
After Your Breast Augmentation
-
You will be required to wear a special bra for several weeks following your surgery. This bra will help with the swelling. Temporary surgical dressings may also be applied.
Fortunately, this surgery does not typically involve drains.
Even though you will be ambulatory — meaning that you’ll be able to walk — you are advised to take it easy and relax for several days. Although recovery times differ, most patients can return to work within three to five days.
After one week, you will return to your doctor so that he can check your progress and remove your sutures and surgical dressings.
Normal activities can usually be resumed within a few days, but intense physical activity should be postponed for four to six weeks. Your chest should be protected from accidental impact and sun exposure for several months.
Interested in more breast augmentation recovery tips?
-
All surgeries carry the risk of complications. Possible complications from breast augmentation include discomfort, bruising, infection, asymmetry, capsular contracture, and changes in skin sensitivity.
We’ll review the breast augmentation risks and safety information during your consultation.
-
Even though the changes to your breasts will be immediate, swelling and bruising from surgery may obscure the changes initially, making it difficult for you to see clear results. This is a normal part of the healing process and is generally not cause for concern.
The final results take a few months to settle and refine, and incision lines will fade and lighten during the 12 to 18 months following the surgery.
-
Our patients are often surprised at how little pain is involved in recovery from augmentation surgery.
Many patients don’t feel the need to use any of their prescription pain medication, feeling that over-the-counter options are all that’s needed.
We’ve had patients equate the feeling as being similar to the strain they’ve had after a very strong upper body workout at the gym. You’ll have some soreness — though not acute pain — which will often last two to four days.
-
Unfortunately, there are no “lifetime” implants. Like any manufactured object, implants have a lifespan. Implant manufacturers warranty their implants for 10 years. However, some implants may only last five years, while others last 20 years.
When implants reach their lifespan, they will weaken and rupture. That will require revision surgery to remove the ruptured implant (and any silicone gel that may have leaked out with silicone implants) and replace both implants with new ones.
So, a woman having breast implants in her 30s can reasonably expect to need to replace her implants at least two or three times in her lifetime. Implants are becoming more durable, but a secondary procedure — at least — should be anticipated.
One plus about replacing implants is that the surgeon can enter through the original incisions. Additionally, unless there is extensive capsular contracture (the hardening of the scar tissue surrounding the implant), the breast pockets created for the original implants should still be able to be used for replacement implants.
-
The cost of your breast augmentation varies on many factors. Therefore, there is no way to estimate the price of your procedure until after your consultation, once your surgery has been mapped out.
Breast augmentation cost factors include:
- Implant selection
- Facility fees
- Surgeon’s fees
- Anesthesia fees
- Any combined surgical techniques
- Post-operative garments and medications
- Pre-surgical tests
Raleigh’s Specialists in Plastic Surgery offers financing options to help you.
-
Breast augmentation is common among younger women who have not had children yet. Therefore, it is understandable why some women are concerned about what subsequent pregnancies will do to their implants and how their implants will affect their pregnancies.
Most women can still breastfeed with breast implants, especially if the inframammary incision is used. This technique usually does not harm the connection between the milk ducts and nipples, which is essential for breastfeeding. If you are looking to breastfeed in the future, please discuss this with your plastic surgeon during your consultation.
Additionally, women commonly notice changes to the shape, size, and position of their breasts after having children. While a pregnancy will not change the implants themselves, it will likely impact the surrounding tissues and breast fat, meaning that the implants may sit differently in the breasts following pregnancy and breastfeeding.
If you notice that your breasts start to sag after having children, you can undergo a breast lift. Alternatively,
-
Breast implant design has come a long way in recent decades, and they are considered very safe. Studies on breast implant safety are continuously being performed to ensure their integrity. Women with silicone breast implants are required to undergo an MRI or ultrasound every two years to check on the status of their implants.
In 2019, there was a connection made between a certain type of textured breast implant (Allergan’s BIOCELL® textured implants and expanders) and the risk of breast implant-associated anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL). It is important to note that this is not breast cancer, but a condition that develops in the scar tissue that forms around the implants.
Even among women with these implants, this condition is very rare and often entirely treatable when found early.
-
Breast implants are the best way to achieve a significant increase in breast size and shape. Women looking for a subtle increase — or women with minimal breast tissue — can consider natural breast augmentation (fat transfer to the breast). This technique uses liposuction to harvest fat from your body (usually the abdomen) and transfers that fat to the breast.
Fat transfer to the breast usually only allows for a size increase of ½ cup to one cup.
Schedule Your Breast Augmentation Consultation in Raleigh, NC
If you’re ready to learn more about breast implant enhancement, please contact our office in Raleigh to schedule a consultation. Call us today at (919) 785-0505.