Skin Tightening After Male Breast Reduction

Following surgery, your incisions will go through a maturation process. For the first few months they will be red and possibly raised and/or firm. As the scar matures, after 6-12 months, it becomes soft, pale, flat, and much less noticeable. You may experience numbness, tingling, burning, “crawling”, or other peculiar sensations around the surgical area. This is a result of the healing of tiny fibers which are trapped in the incision site. These symptoms will disappear. Some people are prone to keloids, which is an abnormal scar that becomes prominent. If you or a blood relative has a tendency to keloid formation, please inform the doctor.Bruising and #swelling are normal and usually increase slightly after the removal of any tape or foam. The bruising will decrease over 3-4 weeks, but may last as long as 6 weeks. The majority of the swelling will be gone within the first 3-4 weeks. However, it may take 6-9 weeks to disappear completely. Also, as you heal, the area may feel “lumpy” and irregular. This, too, decreases with time, and massaging these areas will help soften the scar tissue. The #compression garment helps reduce the swelling, and the longer it is worn, the more quickly you will #heal. It can also assist in the retraction of the skin. If you have any concerns about #healing, its best to ask questions of your surgeon or their nursing staff.

...But to what extent it depends on the individual and their surgery.  It can take up to 6 months for this to occur, and in meantime follow the protocol your doc gave you (compression, likely). 

The skin will generally tighten on its own if you have good elasticity. The elasticity of skin can decrease with age, so younger men have better retraction of the skin.However for men with moderate to severe gynecomastia that are left with a lot of loose skin after surgery, and once the blood flow has been reestablished to the nipple-areolar complex (usually in 4 to 6 months), they would most likely be a candidate for second stage surgery. This is where a donut shaped piece of skin is removed from around the areola and closed with purse string sutures.

This usually depends on the overall quality of the elastic tone in the chest/breast skin before anything is done.  If the skin is extremely loose, droopy and inelastic, actual skin removal might be necessary.  More often, however, the use of ultrasonic liposuction alone will tend to encourage reasonable skin retraction and tightening once the fibrous fat has been removed.

Hi Faisal,Thanks for the post. If the skin tone is good before surgery then it will tighten and re-drape naturally after surgery. The only instance where this may be an issue is if the skin tone is poor or marginal. In these cases a skin resection component may need to be added to the surgery. In borderline cases, I prefer to stage the surgeries to see how much tightening the skin will achieve on its own. This can potentially limit the amount of scars and decrease the potential complication rate.Sincerely,Dr. Dadvand

Thank you for the question.

The end results of gynecomastia surgery are usually seen several months ( and even up to one year) after the procedure is performed. This is especially true if liposuctioning is performed as part of the procedure. Although many patients noted an improvement in the contour of the chest shortly after surgery, it generally takes one to 2 months for swelling to resolve completely and longer for skin redraping and scar maturation to occur.

The degree of skin tightening will depend on factors such as the quality of skin elasticity, patient's age, genetics, and the amount of underlying tissue that was removed during the procedure. These  factors vary from one patient to another.

 Your plastic surgeon will be in the best position to advise you  more precisely.

Best wishes