How to Avoid Breast Implants Looking Like Balls on Chest?

I offer patient's a simple analogy to illustrate what we mean:

Q: If you take a baseball and you cover it with a silksheet, what will it look like?

A: Like a baseball, you will even see the stitching.

Q: Now if you take that same baseball and cover it with a comforter what will you see?

A: It depends on how thick the comforter is but generally you will see a softly shaped lump.

So now the question is what do you have on your chest, silk sheets or comforters?

The way we determine this is by looking at your chest, if I can see your ribs (under the muscle) then you anatomy will have a hard time disguising the implant whether it is placed under or over the muscle and you are more likely better off with a silicone implant. Another way of measuring this is to pinch your upper chest skin (similar to pinch and inch of your waist on the Special K commercial). If you have less than an 2 cm (under 4/5 of an inch) than you have "silk sheets"

If you have a thicker skin/fat/breast layer that pinches over an inch than you have the option of going under or over.

Now the exception to the rule:

Q: What happens if you change the baseball to a volleyball?

A: All bets are off, whether you put it under or over the muscle it will not look natural.

The last issue is the implant shape. There are some anatomic shaped implants but I have generally found them to produce no significant difference in outcome with the exception of breast cancer reconstruction. However, this is my personal opinion
 

Implants that are too round and tight appearing on the chest can happen because of capsular contracture, large implants being placed in very thin individuals, and imprecise selection of the pocket location and implant type.
Many of these issues can be prevented if you see a board-certified plastic surgeon who can address your concerns and explain what they will do to avoid an unnatural result.

To avoid a "ball" type look I recommend the implants be placed submuscular and not subglandular. Meaning, have the implants under the pectoral muscle and not in front of the pectoral muscle. Also using an anatomic, or "tear drop" shaped implant can avoid the "ball" look that you are concerned with having.
Discuss this with your surgeon.
Best wishes.

A common
error that leads to an unnatural appearance after breast augmentation, even
with implants of an ideal size, is inadequate lower pole dissection and/or
inadequate release of the pectoralis major origin just above the inframammary
fold. As a result the implants sit too high and appear excessively full in the
upper poles (the area above the nipple-areola complex), while the lower poles -
which should be the fullest area of the breast - are underfilled. Inadequate
muscle release may also result in bizarre-appearing breast implant animation
when the pec major muscle contracts. In some cases this may result in one or
both of their implants jumping up literally to the level of a patient's
collarbones - an alarmingly unnatural look, and one that is totally avoidable 



A shaped form stable breast implant can give the patient
the lowest risk of fold and ripples in the lower pole, the lowest risk of a
visible transition between natural breast tissue and implant  (sometime
refereed to as a double bubble) and the lowest risk of breast implant
malposition with the breasts bottoming out. I think there is a performance
difference between form stable breast implants. Consult with plastic surgeon
who have experience and expertise perfuming this particular procedure. 

 

In many breast augmentation patients,
the inframammary fold needs to be lowered in order to allow the implant to rest
at a level that appears natural relative to the position of the nipple and
areola. Ideally the implant should be centered directly behind the
nipple-areola complex (NAC). In profile, the natural-appearing breast is not
convex in the upper pole, and an excessively convex and overly full upper pole
is a dead giveaway that a breast implant sits below the skin. In addition,
inadequate release of the inferior origin of the pectoralis major will allow
the muscle to hold the implant in too high a position, and may even cause the
implant to displace upwards (as high as the collar bone in some patients) when
the muscle contracts. Patients with this problem require reoperation to release
the inferior origin of the pec major and/or the inframammary fold.

Likewise, if the inframammary fold is lowered too far, the
augmented breast will appear 'bottomed out', with an excessively full lower
pole, an empty upper pole, and a nipple/areola that appears to sit too high on
the breast - another situation with a distinctly unnatural appearance, and one
that requires surgical correction: repair of the inframammary fold(s).

The more soft tissue you have covering them, the more likley they will look natural. Also that means that a smaller implant usually looks better.

Hello,
Most good surgeons listen to their patients when they express their desires. You need to go to a good surgeon and listen to what he or she tells you and then go from there. The way your tissues are distributed as well as your dimensions and tissue thickness really determine everything else.
You are probably looking at mid-range implants in volume with muscular coverage.

If you have breast augmentation surgery, you cannot avoid it - but you can minimize it.
First, the result you described is USUALLY seen when an implant has little soft tissue cover from the beginning or loses its cover due to tissue wasting and is then squeezed by a choking scar tissue which balls things up, called capsular contracture.
Capsular contracture is seen more commonly with suprapectoral / under the gland placement, with the older gel implants, with a blunt pocket dissection leaving blood in the pocket (rather than precise bloodless cautery dissection), with foreign bodies in the wound (gown fragments, gauze fragments, glove starch) and by infection.
The best way to minimize it - pick a good surgeon who would help you pick an implant that would be covered by your present breast and will not exert too much pressure eventually causing your breast to thin out and uncover the implant; To put the implant under the muscle in a precise and close to atraumatic tech AFTER changing and washing the surgeon's gloves and irrigating the pocket.
That should prevent a large portion of capsular contracture.
I hope this was helpful.

The way to get an artificial looking breast is to make wrong choices! Wrong size,wrong pocket,wrong surgeon! A gel implant with the proper size and in the proper pocket will get you a natural result.

You are a thin woman and the larger the implant you go with, the more it can overtake the natural look. I am a firm believer in sub-muscular placement to provide better upper and middle breast coverage.
You should try the implants that will be used on in a sports bra and take a look in the mirror. This is the only good way to get an idea of what to expect from your surgery. Best of luck.
Dr Edwards

Little Bigger Illinois:
It is difficult to determine how your proposed surgery will turn out without having the luxury of reviewing pre-operative photographs, examining your native breast tissue, or knowing the placement of the implant as proposed by your surgeon. The above factors as well as the implant size/shape used, will all contribute to the "look" of the breast.
Having said that, we typically see breasts with a "ball" appearance if the implants have been placed in a purely submuscular plane through an axillary approach in a patient with minimal or no stigmata involutional atrophy. The preferred approach in my practice is a "dual-plane" approach through a peri-areolar incision. This technique, when combined with an appropriately sized implant for your body-habitus, will generally give an excellent breast appearance with a natural slope.
Best of luck !