Should I stop taking birth control for breast augmentation?

Deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary emboli can represent life threatening conditions. Both birth control pills and estrogen replacement have been associated with these conditions. For these reasons, we recommend that patients stop birth control pills two weeks prior to breast augmentation surgery.

This is an important question. Birth control pills can increase your risk for clotting especially in the first several months. I would discuss this issue at length with your gynecologist and plastic surgeon for specific recommendations tailored to you and the procedures performed.

You should stop taking birth control pills and estrogen replacement therapy about four to six weeks before surgery because of the risk of blood clots. If your surgeon advised you to stop, then please listen to them.

A breast augmentation is a short surgical procedure with little increase in risk of VTE events. It is probably not necessary to stop these medications in the peri-operative period. However, if breast augmentation is combined with other procedures and operative times are prolonged beyond three hours, its wise to stop the OCPs.

Hi there-

As you can see, opinions vary...

The bottom line... For short procedures in a patient with no elevated risks, there is no reason to stop your contraceptives.

If you have a reason to have an elevated risk for blood clots, or the procedure is longer than an hour or so, or if you simply want your risks to be as low as is possible, I would recommend stopping them.

In general, I do not have patients stop oral contraceptives before doing a short operative procedure like a breast augmentation if the patient is healthy and has no risk factors like a previous blood clot or other medical problems.

However, if the patient is having other/additional  operative procedures which prolong the operative time to greater than 4 hours and/or has other risk factors, one should consider stopping the birth control pills for at least one month preop to decrease the chances for a blood clot

There is not a clear recommendation to stop oral contraceptive medication before breast augmentation surgery. The risk of DVT ( deep venous thrombosis) in a breast augmentation patient that is young, healthy, and does not smoke is extremely low.  However, there is a very small increase in the risk of DVT in patients who take birth control pills. Therefore some surgeons may  recommend  stopping  the pill 15 to 30 days before breast augmentation in an effort to lower this small risk of DVT even further. 

 

Jaime Perez M.D  Plastic Surgery Center of Tampa

Breast Augmentation Surgeon

I assume there are two reasons for this concern: 1) alteration in breast size  and 2) possible risk of DVT. In general, this is not a common practive in an uncomplicated bilateral augmentation mammaplasty.

Even the experts don't agree on this question!  Since breast augmentation is a short procedure, and patients are rapidly up and about afterwards, I don't typically ask my patients to stop their birth control pills.  However, if you are in a high risk group for a DVT (and there are a number of known factors), then it should be definitely considered as a risk-reduction strategy.

Taking birth control pills around the time of surgery may slightly increase the chance of blood clot formation.

The patient and doctor must decide whether the risk warrants going off the birth control pills, including the downside of bleeding for three months, face breaking out, mood changes, etc. etc. etc. that many women experience when they alter their birth control regimen.

While postmenopausal hormone supplements (including bioidentical in my opinion) would predispose to blood clot formation and we do strongly recommend patients discontinue them, we would consider birth control pills a softer factor.

We allow the patient to make that decision after giving the options to her.  Like so many things in medicine, there are pros and cons to most issues.