What's the Maximum Breast Size You'd Recommend for Petite Frame?

For a woman who is a small frame, a dimensional sizing system is now becoming much more popular. Your size and volume depend upon your biases, your frame and your surgeon’s experience. A woman who has a very small frame and a narrow base width breast will have some restrictions on her as to what implants can be used, particularly if she chooses anatomic implants. Using round smooth implants under the muscle will give you larger volume opportunities than your actual measurements may imply. These tradeoffs should be discussed with you in your consultation. If your main concern is to look natural and proportionate, then a more modest enhancement will be something that will be discussed with you using both measurement techniques as well as sizing techniques in consultation with you and your surgeon. I do the sizing myself in all of my consultations so that patients have a full opportunity to discuss the tradeoffs that occur with each different implant style. Because I offer more than one style, I enable my patients to become “an expert” in both their breast and their implant options.Of course adding fat to your implant breast augmentation is another option using a Brava technique to expand your tissues. You and I may discuss serially adding fat to your breasts that will be yours forever and will never need an implant replacement. These opportunities are now much more common for a woman who wants to be “proportionate” and wishes to have the naturalness of her own fat over the long term. For a woman who has already had two children she may commonly find that her breasts are very saggy from pregnancies and breastfeeding.Having a breast augmentation may give you some nipple repositioning but if the nipple position is below your fold you may need a lift at the same time. Should you get pregnant again with implants under your muscle, there is no interruption of your breast from the nipple connection. The milk ducts go right to the nipple and the implant is placed behind the muscle so there is no negative consequence. Having the implant in your breast under the muscle has no difficulty with you breastfeeding if you didn’t have breastfeeding problems to begin with. The discussion of these particular elements are undertaken at the time of my consultation with my patients, especially if they have not yet completed their fertility so none of their options are foreclosed.

It is difficult to say what implant will work without seeing you and performing measurements. I generally have my patients do what is called the rice test, which you will find on my website under the journal section. After the rice test is performed we sit down and figure out an implant size that works for the dimensions the patient has.
Good luck.

 I agree with Dr. Shafer wholeheartedly. This is not a formula. It depends on a combination of anatomic factors taking into account your goals and desires. There are consequences to larger implants which include larger incisions, greater risk of nipple numbness, stretching of the breast skin and areola. etc.