Retained Pigment from Breast Lift Scar?

Plastic surgery scars require attention after surgery so that they remain cosmetically-appealing and barely noticeable. In our office, we use a protocol for scars that minimizes their activity in the 6-8 weeks after surgery. If you have late plastic surgery scars, you may also require laser and RF therapy to help reduce the longterm effects of the scarring. Keloids, hypertrophic scars, widened scars, red scars, and hyperpigmented scars all require scar modulation with topical creams followed by lasers and RF therapy. Topical skincare should be directed to a specific need, whether for pigmentation or hypertrophy and our office can guide you through the process to obtain the correct Plato’s Scar cream or Melarase cream for hypertrophy and discoloration. In terms of lasers, we would employ the vbeam laser for redness, Venus Viva RF, PRP microneedling, chemical peels, and Morpheus 8, fractional erbium, or fractional co2. All of these have their individual benefits. Most of all, we recommend you visit a solid plastic surgeon who understands surgical scar revision, laser therapy, and RF therapy for scars.

Best,
Dr. Karamanoukian
Realself100 Surgeon

Sometimes an operation is hard to say exactly where the areola stops. When the skin is been taken out to complete the mastopexy occasionally small amount of areola will persist. After healing is visible in most of the time can be excised with a simple operation.

Dear Ariel99,
This condition of residual areola pigmentation in the vertical scar is more common when the areolae were especially large preoperatively. There is a point where the surgeon can only put so much tension on the closure before he risks violating the circulation resulting in skin loss or death. However, typically after six month’s time when things have relaxed and the swelling has gone, it’s an easy matter under local anesthesia to re-excise the majority or all of that retained pigmentation. What charges are involved vary from office to office. In our own case, I typically perform this at no additional charge to the patient.

Best of luck to you.

For patients with large areolas who have a vertical or anchor pattern lift, it is often not possible to safely remove all of the pigmented areolar skin, and it persists in the vertical closure line. The revision is quite simple after the skin has recovered from the original surgery and has stretched out enough to allow removal of the area in question.

It is usually simple, done with local anesthesia. You would have to ask your surgeon for a quote--this is so variable from office to office.

All the best. 

If your areola was very wide in diameter then sometimes some remnats of it will be visible on the vertical limb of the scar.  The usually can be revised under local anesthesia

For patients that started with a large areola, it is not uncommon to have some retained pigment along a portion of your vertical scar.   Depending on the quality of your tissue, you may be a candidate for a scar revision.  Please talk to your PS for an evaluation and to learn more about your options

Start of by discussing this with your plastic surgeon. This may be done easily with local anesthetic and minimal down time.

What you are describing, residual areola pigmented skin ( usually at the top of the vertical incision of the breast lifting scar)  is not uncommonly seen after breast lifting done for patients with relatively large areola. As you mentioned, revisionary breast surgery is often successful in removing the residual pigmented skin. Of course, much will depend on how much pigment is left and the current skin elasticity around the area. Sometimes, the pigmented skin is best removed in stages ( more than one procedure);  If too much skin is removed in one session, the breast shape may be changed unfavorably.

 You will find the cost will vary depending on surgeon, location, type of anesthesia used...

 I hope this helps.

 

It is not uncommon to have some residual areolar pigmented skin in the vertical scar following breast lift surgery in patients with large areola.  Usually, this requires minor scar revision in an office setting for correction.  Discuss this with your Plastic Surgeon.