It sounds as though you had a communication gap with...

It sounds as though you had a communication gap with your doctor. A G cup patient would, in almost any surgeon's eye, need a "breast reduction" to improve symptoms and make the breasts a better size match for the rest of your body. A reduction essentially always includes a lift.

A lift alone, however, doesn't require your breasts to become much smaller if all of your breast tissue is preserved and just the skin envelope is reshaped and reduced.

On the other hand, if you just lift a patient with huge breasts and don't reduce them some, gravity will take over again and you will need the surgery repeated.

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The simple answer to you question is that all breast lifts do not require a reduction in the size of the breast. But it sounds like you may have had some miscommunication with your surgeon.

Part of the process for getting good surgical results with this procedure is not only matching the breast lift to the patient's body proportions but also to listen to the patient and get a real sense of what they are looking for. Some women are very clear that they do not want to change the size of their breasts, simply the shape, while other wants both improvement in shape as well as reduction in size. This communication throughout your consultation is key to getting the results you desire.

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I would be interested to learn why you had a breast reduction (it does not sound like you had a breast 'lift' or mastopexy) in the first place?

Certainly with size 'G' breasts, you might have had neck and back pain, posture problems or hygeine issues. If this was the case, have these troublesome symptoms resolved? If they have, then you achieved one of the important goals of the procedure, and that something to be happy about!

As far as the breast size reduction, you insurance carrier might have 'demanded' that a certain minimum amount of tissue be removed during your breast reduction. This is a common demand by third party payors. At times, it's challenging to safely remove the amount of breast tissue that the insurance company requires, but in other cases, it's not a problem. Your surgeon cannot remove all of the tissue that is available to be removed, since the blood supply to the remaining breast skin and nipple must be preserved.

If your insurance company paid for your breast reduction, that may explain why your surgeon removed the amount of tissue that he/she did.

Frankly, a 36D size, if that is what you truly are, is not 'so small', but size is in the eye of the beholder, correct?

It's my feeling that third party payors set the 'required' amount of breast tissue to be removed on the 'high' side, thus preventing a subset of patients that really need the procedure but fall under the resection requirement, from getting the procedure. Insurance companies don't want to pay for surgery and they do not have your health in mind when they authorize or decline to pay for a procedure.

The sooner the public comes to grip with this fact, the sooner appropriate reforms will be made in our ridiculous health care delivery system.