Can Botox Be Used in the Chest Muscle to Stop the Breast Implant from Moving/flexing?

Thank you for your question. Theoretically, this is possible, but you would need a fairly large dose to prevent the muscle from moving the implant. This would need to be done 2-3 times per year, and can become very costly. I personally use Botox in the chest muscle of my patients preoperatively. I do my augmentations under intravenous sedation only and in some women the muscle is very tight. The Botox helps with the surgery and early postop women do not have the muscle tightness and spasms. If the surgery is done under general anesthesia, than muscle relaxants can be given during surgery, since you are intubated and the machine makes you breathe.

Botox can help with this issue, but I have a few issues for you to consider.  First, it may take more botox than other areas so cost maybe an issue.  Second, as you know, it is temporary. Third, you may have issues if the doctor accidentally injures the implant itself.  Good luck with this.

Dr. Vasisht- South Shore Plastic Surgery

Yes, it can be used to paralyze/weaken your chest muscles but as mentioned, its not permanent and introduces the risk of injuring your implant.  If you muscle movement is really bothersome to you, consider just having them repositioned above the muscle if you're willing to accept all the negatives that go with that.

It will take a week for the botox to work and may help with spasm of the chest muscle after breast augmentation.

Dear EZ,

Thank you for your question.  You are referring to breast animation, or abnormal movement of the breast on flexion of the pectoralis major muscle.  This is theoretically possible, but very costly and a bit dangerous.  You would need quite a lot of botox in these muscles, and they would weaken your arms as well, and this would have to be done every 3 months.  Also, with the constant needle pokes in various areas, the implant is at risk of puncture.  A much better approach is to place the implant in a new pocket above the muscle.  I like the 'sub fascial' approach or placement of the implant below the muscle fascia (covering of the muscle) but still above the muscle.  This is Will stop the 'breast animation' permanently, and not weaken your muscle.  The only reason that implants were put under the muscle in the first place was to avoid implant rippling.  With the new implants that are available today, this has become much less important as the for stable (gummy bear) implants have very low rippling potential.  The following link is one of many subfascial augmentations I do in thin women with no rippling.

Best Wishes,

Pablo Prichard, MD