I had a breast lift and my stitches opened up in many places. Is this normal? (photos)

While it is not unusual to have nipple areola/skin separation after a standard mastopexy, and it's not necessarily true that the closure of this wound may lead to an infection.If you were my patient (and yes I have had such wound separations just like all plastic surgeons), I would numb the area around the skin separation and put a few well placed staples to approximate the wound edges.  The beauty of staples is that they don't strangulate the tissue leading to unwanted scarring, they don't close the wound entirely engendering an infection, but they do take the tension off the suture line letting it heal by secondary intention with minimal to no scarring.My old boss used to say, fibroblasts make better tightrope walkers than they do broad jumpers which means when the staples bring the edges of the wound together, the fibroblasts (wound healing cells) can heal the wound faster and with less scarring than when the wound edges are apart.

It is safer to let them heal and come back and revise the scars if needed. Otherwise, if closed now, your wounds will probably reopen due to infection. Please follow your surgeon's advice.

Hi there, thank you for the photos and your question. Spitting sutures (sutures trying to come through the skin) is very common after surgery. This is totally acceptable. The most important thing is to keep them clean and continue to follow your surgeons wound care instructions.