Correcting asymmetric breasts

Almost everyone has asymmetric breasts.



I have come to a conclusion after more than 10 years in this field that there is a very rare amount of people with symmetric breasts. This is like a person with two eyes living in the middle of those people who all have one eye. You can think that having asymmetric breasts is rather normal. A person’s body itself is asymmetric. Also, today, we see people using PC and smartphone a lot, therefore all these people do not have straight back, neck, shoulder due to the much usage of these products. Breasts are on the upper body, therefore, the bad positions leads to worsening of asymmetric breasts.

Let’s look at some of the factors of asymmetric breasts.

1. Body frame and structure

Almost everyone has such type of asymmetric body. It is because there are different organs on the right and left side of your upper body.

The heart is positioned a little left from the center of the chest. The left and right lungs are shaped differently as well. This is why the left side is more exposed than the right.

Such exposed body frame makes people look like that they have larger left breast. Or crooked body structure - crooked back, left shoulder dropping down, crooked spine, etc - makes asymmetric breasts as well.

There are not many people who have straight formed body. As such, I have shared about the body form that we need to look at carefully in considering asymmetric breasts. The problem with this is that we cannot solve this problem by a surgery. We cannot remove rib or change the chest structure. Nobody can think that we could.

This is why I have shared that the bone structure on the left and right side of your body are different before you start to think that you have asymmetric breasts (many people do not know about this difference in the upper body)

2. Nipple and areola (including the location of inframammary fold)

The nipples and areolas on both sides cannot be positioned on the same straight line. Also, there is a pattern to this, there are more people with higher left areola, nipple. Almost all have left check exposed more than the right therefore, the left breast skin - tissue cells are tighter making the left nipple and areola positioned higher.

The inframammary fold is also higher at the breast with higher areola and nipple. The problem is correcting this. We can make the position of the areola and the nipple higher through the dual plane method. (Not too much though) The dual plane method makes the area above the pectoralis muscle larger leading to a pulling effect by the implant. The pulling makes the areola and the niplle shift upwards.



Inframammary fold asymmetry is not something to be worried about if your left chest is larger or the left inframammary fold is lower. The implant would be put into the right side making the inframammary fold lower therefore making up for the unbalance on both sides.

But it becomes difficult in the opposite case. Let’s say that you have larger left breast but the inframammary fold is higher. We need to use small sized implant but make the inframammary fold lower. We need to pull up the inframammary fold and the areola of the right breast in such case.



We need to design the right inframammary fold so that it is in balance with the left and apply dual plane so that the areola is pulled upwards. The inframammary fold will be placed lower at the same time improving on the asymmetry. We must apply inframammary fold incision in this case!!

3. Difference in the breast tissue cells

Mots patient think that their breasts are asymmetric because the breast tissue cells are different on both breasts. They think that there is different amount of fat on each breast. (Actually, the difference exists in the upper body) If there is more breast tissue on the left compared to the right, you would want to place smaller sized implant on the left, and a larger one on the right. Most patients do so. The volume of the breast is equal to the original volume and the volume of the implant. The volume of the implant does not change over time, but the original breast volume does.

A human body is not a plastic or vinyl, but has tissue cells that change, age or disappear with time. The right breast is small therefore more tense, and if the implant gets into the right breast, there would be more tension caused on the skin which might lead to contraction.

At first the volume of both breasts might look the same, but after 2 ~ 3 years, the smaller original breast would start to lose the volume. Such happening, i.e. contraction leads to the avoidance of using largely differents sized implant in correcting asymmetric breasts.

This is one of the difficulties that the surgeons face in the field. Most patients are not patient enough to wait 2~3 years to see if the correction is successful or not.

Most patients are unsatisfied with the result on the very next day, therefore command recorrection and and even make civil complaints.

The surgeons have tens of decisions to make in their head and carry out the action. The patients just see what they can and believe what they see. When the doctors becomes accustomed to this with experience, they tend to focus on instant results that the patients want. This would lead to good reviews.... 

We feel this all the time but we cannot avoid it because it is a huge problem. In the medical system at our country, it is impossible for a doctor to consider long term results and plan accordingly.
 

4. Breast ptosis

There are some patients who suffer breast ptosis before marriage. There are some who suffer it since breastfeeding.

Also aging can lead to loss of skin elasticity and the difference in the loss of elasticity on both breasts lead to asymmetric breasts.

A sudden diet in losing weight can make sagging of one breast worse than the other.

Breast ptosis leading to asymmetric breasts is different from that caused by difference in breast tissue. Most patients are aware that they have asymmetric breasts.

If the breast gland and areola/nipple are all sagging, then the lifting method must be applied. So at times we would apply the lifting method just on the sagging breast and leave the other one as it is.

What if both breasts are sagging but the degree of sagging is different on both sides. We need to apply lifting on both breasts but the degree would have to be different.

This procedure becomes difficult when both augmentation and lifting get involved.

If both breasts are sagging and are asymmetric, it becomes really difficult to know how much difference there is in the volume of the two breasts. This makes it difficult for the doctor to decide on the size of the implants. I think the best method is to decide on the size of the implant as you carry out the correction procedure. You need to apply different lifting and make the position of both breasts similar. Then, we can add more volume on the breasts and compare them so that they becomes similar as well.

If the position of the two breasts are too far apart, it is impossible to measure if the volumes are similar or not. Therefore, it is important to have both breasts at the same plane. and then compare the volume to have the best possible result.

Today, I shared some contents on asymmetric breasts. I hope it has helped you much.

This is a really difficult area and there are some things that even the doctors do not know exactly. You are really smart if you understood what I have written above. This is all for today. Thank you.