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  • The Best Way to Choose Your Breast Implant
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Hi, I'm Dr. Jed Horowitz, and I'm a board certified plastic surgeon practicing in Newport Beach, California. Today, I would like to talk about the best way to choose your breast implant.

On sites like realself.com patients will frequently write in and say my doctor has chosen an implant 350 cc and is this a good size for me. We need to know more information to help you make the best choice.

It's important to know what size bra you currently wear. Is it a 32, 34, 36 bra, and, of course, the cup size? The strap size is important to know because that affects the diameter of the cup and subsequently the diameter of the breast implant that we choose. We also need to know your height, your weight, and it's helpful to know your dress size as well.

In addition, it would be very helpful if you include photos of yourself. A front view, a side view, and a three-quarter view are most helpful. This will let us see if there are any breast asymmetries, if the breasts are narrow, if the breasts are wide, what your chest wall looks like, and this will also help us make a decision as to the best size breast implant for you.

In my experience in general, if a woman wears a size 36 AB bra and would like to be a C cup, which is the average size that women wear and the average size bra that is sold, she needs a volume of approximately 350 to 390 cc to make that change. This becomes less if she's wearing a 34 bra, because it has a smaller strap size and the cups have a smaller diameter. A smaller diameter implant would then be a volume of approximately 300 to 350 cc. In the same way if she was more petite, maybe a double zero or size one and wore a 32 AB bra, then to become a 32C cup she would only require about 250 to 300 cc.

This is a general number, and of course there are other factors that will affect this. For example, if she has a chest wall issue where the chest is slightly sunken, this is called a pectus deformity, then she would require a little bit more volume to first bring her chest to a level position and then move forward to the projection of a C cup. This may require implants of about 50cc more. It's important to examine the patient and have complete information to make this decision.

In part two of choosing the correct implant I will discuss available methods to help you make this choice that makes this an easier process for you. Until then, thank you for watching this video. This is Dr. Jed Horowitz from Newport Beach, California.

The Best Way to Choose Your Breast Implant

Dr. Jed Horowitz provides suggestions how to select the best implant for you and how you can help your surgeon by providing them with additional information.