I Want to Reduce my Implants from 300cc to 200cc, How Can I Choose the Best Implant Option?

Definitely see a plastic surgeon that specializes in breast surgery, do not get too caught up in the numbers, cms, etc and articulate your wishes and goals and then let he or she recommend the implant type, style, model, and technique with reasons for each.  

To determine your best option I would need to see pictures or examine you.  Wrinkles may be more of an issue if you decrease the size of your implants so I would consider a cohesive gel implant.  

Thank you for the question.

I think your best bet is to communicate the goals clearly with your plastic surgeon; in my practice, I prefer the use of goal pictures to help with this communication process.

 After feeling comfortable that you have communicated your goals clearly, you may want to allow your plastic surgeon to choose the appropriate  breast implant size/profile ( based on intraoperative measurements, dimensional planning)  that will  most closely match your goals.

 Hard to know, without examination whether you will have loose skin;  your plastic surgeon will be in the best position to advise you accurately.

 Best wishes.

A 100 cc drop is not too significant but may get you to where you want to be. This is often a tough call in termes of knowing exactly how they will look and how the skin will respond.

Generally going down 100 cc's shouldn't be a problem as long as your breasts have reasonable tone.  A somewhat wider based implant makes sense in this situation.  You should discuss with your surgeon a range of sizes that would work and might allow him or her to make the final determination using sizer implants at the time of the surgery.

Thank you for your question.  When considering down-sizing a breast implant, it is very important to determine exactly what about the result is not satisfactory to you, the patient.  As you alluded to, it may not actually be the volume of the implant but perhaps the style of the implant that is the issue.  Naturally, an in-person office consultation is critical.  You will get the most out of your consultation if you can bring your operative note, your preoperative photos and implant information with you, as well as photos of breast sizes and proportions that you find aesthetically appealing.  That being said, I do not think that you will have much loose skin if you down size your implant 100cc 18 months after surgery. This assumes you did not have loose skin to start.  I do think that switching from a high profile to a midrange/moderate plus profile could solve the issue.  Hope this helps.  As always, only have surgery with a plastic surgeon board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery.

Tracy Pfeifer, MD, MS

This is something best discussed with your surgeon. I would generally faovr maintaining the same base diameter, which would mean using a moderate or moderate plus implant. 

Expect about a half cup decrease in size. Without a photo it is hard to speculate about sagging, but 100 cc typically would not cause a problem. 

Thanks for your question, best wishes.

If the original implant was sized properly in terms of the width of the implant matching the internal width of your breast, then it was not distorted and you should have no problem downsizing to a lower profile as long as you keep the width (diameter) of the implant about the same. If you chose the highest profile gel-filled implant then you can drop to the middle profile (not called that) and lose a half cup size of forward volume or you can drop to the lowest profile (not called that) and drop a full cup size. The key is to maintain the width of the implant. The tissues will accommodate the reduced forward volume if they weren't distorted by too big an implant the first time. 

You can scale up the width of the implant if you wanted to go bigger (up to a point) but you can't scale down the width of the implant and expect the pocket of the existing implant to shrink down reliably without doing complicated capsule rearrangement. It's like putting a foot in too wide a shoe and expecting the width of the shoe to shrink down to the new, narrower foot. The number of cc's is determined by looking up the lower profile gel-filled implants with the same (or very similar) width.