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  • Breast Surgery Recovery: What To Expect and How To Aid the Process
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Hey, Dr. Lowenstein here from Santa Barbara. Let's talk about recovery from surgery because today I saw a bunch of questions on Real Self about that and it's always a common question. And again, this has to be tailored to you and your surgery, so a recovery from a facelift is different than a recovery from a breast augmentation. Let's talk about breast augmentation today.
After surgery there is discomfort and in my practice we give you oral pain medications. I put long-term pain medication in the pocket as well to help with discomfort after surgery, but anybody who tells you that there's going to be maybe no pain after a breast augmentation is trying to tell you something. So you're going to have some discomfort for the first night, next day. It's going to start to abate after that and for the next couple of days it's going to get less, and less, and less.
What I like to see is my patients kind of take it easy for the first two to three weeks. I don't want you really doing any working out. I don't really want to do anything that's going to make you sweat. It's a good rule of thumb. If you're not sweating, your heart rate's not up too much, you're not moving things around too much, and frankly you're not sweating into the wound which can make a scar less attractive.
With that being said though, you can go back to a lot of activities really shortly after surgery. Most patients get back to work or school in a couple of days, and you don't want to be making major decisions, you don't want to be taking exams, or doing big things at work while you're on pain medication, prescription pain medication, so kind of that's a rule of thumb. You shouldn't be driving during that period of time anyway. But, patients are only usually on either Percocet or Vicodin for a couple of days and patients often quickly off of that on Tylenol. And at that point you don't want to do anything too strenuous, but you can get back to work relatively quickly.
So again, rule of thumb, if you're going to take a week off of work, great. If you have some flexibility, take a week off of work and you maybe even be able to get back to work in a couple days. Similarly with school. It should be more than a week, but maybe even less than that.
So that's what I tell patients regarding recovery after really all types of breast surgery. I hope that helps, happy to answer any questions that come up here in my office. Again, Adam Lowenstein, Santa Barbara. Thanks for listening, take care.

Breast Surgery Recovery: What To Expect and How To Aid the Process

Dr. Adam Lowenstein discusses the do's and dont's that a patient can expect following breast surgery.