Oakland Breast Implants doctors

Care Credit is a great financing program and has helped dozens of my patients have surgery that would otherwise been unable to afford it if they had to pay the full cost up front.  The interest rate is currently about 14.9%, not cheap, but fairly standard for consumer finance compared to credit cards. You have to have a reasonably high credit score to qualify, but if you do you can finance the procedure over 2-5 years with monthly payments. 

Breast augmentation recovery with return to normal activity including driving takes about four days or less for 95% of my patients and three days or less for 85%.  I recommend that patients keep their heart rate under 100 for two weeks.  This keeps their blood pressure down and lessens the chance that they could have bleeding into the pocket after surgery. This seems to work since the incidence of bleeding or hematoma has been about 1/10th of one percent in the last 23 years. Sixty-five percent of patients have no bruising at all and another thirty percent have minimal or slight bruising.

Normal activity is defined as the ability to lift normal weight objects, raise your hands above your head sufficiently to wash your hair, and to drive. If you are a physical education teacher requiring aerobic activity you could certainly return to work, but I would advise against running around so much that your heart rate exceeds the rate of 100. You could have a period of brisk walking or similar activity, but followed by a rest so you stay at or under the 100 limit. This does not mean you would have a problem if you exceeded the limit, but as an arbitrary guideline, it seems to work.  Patients with office-type jobs usually go back to work in three or four days, as soon as they feel comfortable. For example, with surgery on Friday, patients would go back to work on Monday or Tuesday. Patients who have to use their arms a lot, like restaurant servers, usually take five to eight days off, sometimes longer.

After surgery, my patients are advised to lift their arms overhead five times an hour. We start them in the recovery room. This helps hasten recovery by stretching out the pectoralis muscle. They don't wear any special bras or have drains. Specific details of recovery can be found on my website. You should consult your own plastic surgeon for specific guidelines on when to return to work and return to any specific activity.

Scars should never be obvious when you wear a swimsuit, and only if done in the underarm would they even be barely visible. Scars are kept to a minimum length in my practice, just sufficient to make the pocket.  For saline implants this can be as short as 2.5 -3.5 cm. or 1.0-1.5 inches. Incisions are repaired very securely with slowly absorbing sutures so there is no worry about the incision coming open in the healing process, and there are no sutures to remove.

In the past, a gel implant required a larger incision than a saline implant.  The saline implant comes deflated and can be placed through a 2.5-3.5 cm incision. However, a gel implant comes fully filled from the manufacturer, so one must imagine the full size of the new breast fitting through the incision. The larger the implant, the larger is the required incision. In fact in the past, implants in the 400 cc or larger range required incisions of 4.5-5.25 cm or larger. The reason the incision had to be longer is because one cannot force an implant through an incision that is too small. In the first place, the implant will simply not go through the incision, and secondly, the manipulation required to gradually introduce the implant could traumatize the implant shell, possibly leading to early implant failure.  The usual procedure is to make an incision of adequate length, and then if there is any significant resistance at the time of insertion, to stop, remove the implant and slightly lengthen the incision.

For patients requesting gel implants, I always now give them the option of using a Keller Funnel, to get the smallest possible incision.  This innovation in breast augmentation surgery allows placement of gel implants through incisions that are often as small as the incision required for saline implants.  This depends on the implant size, but since most women have implants of 400 cc or smaller, most women can have their implants placed through an incision length of 3.5-3.75 cm, the same as saline implants. You can read more about the Keller Funnel at their website.

The result is a shorter scar and minimal handling or trauma to the implant regardless of incision location.  The incision location is an individualized decision made in consultation with the patient based on her anatomy, location preference and consideration of trade-offs and advantages with each incisional approach.  Since I offer a choice of all incision locations, patients make their own choice after consideration of the pros and cons associated with each.