With breast augmentation, tissues are elevated from their pre-operative anatomic locations, and pockets (spaces for your implants) created, either above or below the muscles. These tissues are previously attached to each other by connective tissue, blood vessels, and nerves, some of which are unavoidably cut in the creation of those pockets.Sensation to the nipple area is provided by the lateral 4th intercostal nerve, and occasionally by branches of the 3rd and 5th. These nerves are the ones that can be cut or damaged in the surgical pocket creation. I believe that axillary incisions can more commonly injure these nerves, since the dissection is from the armpit along the course of these nerves, and can be more easily damaged as dissection is carried down towards the breast from the armpit. Likewise, the final sensory branches of these nerves can be cut by using periareolar incisions, along with bacteria-filled breast ducts.The specific nerve(s) to the nipple, if stretched or damaged during surgery, will result in the nipple area on one or both sides being numb. However, if only irritated, stretched, or partially damaged, they will heal and nipple sensation will return. This can take, as you have read in other answers, 6, 12, 18, or even up to 24 months to maximally recover.If the nerve(s) to the nipple areas are completely cut, then one or both will be permanently numb. This is relatively uncommon, but ranges around 5% overall.Different nerves provide sensation to the rest of the breast skin; these are tiny and branch more, but can still be cut or damaged in the course of making skin incisions or surgically creating implant pockets. The difference is that most of these will heal and recover. You could think of the nerves to the skin as a carpet of moss, but the nerve to the nipple as a vine. The pie-shaped wedge you describe are the tiny skin nerves that usually recover near-completely over 6-12 or rarely more months. If your nipples are specifically numb, that could be permanent, or it might come back if the nerves are still intact, but just partially injured by the surgery. That is why we tell patients nipple sensation can take up to a year or more to recover.The tape had nothing to do with numbness.As Dr. Morgan stated, you doctor may have seemed "unconcerned" simply because there is nothing to do but wait and see what heals and what is permanent as healing progresses over a year or more. You have to understand that whatever occurred did so in the operating room, and there is nothing that can be done now to "uncut" or repair whatever tiny nerve fibers were divided in the performance of your surgery. These nerves are not large structures you can identify and preserve by "more careful" dissection, nor are they color-coded or waving a miniature white flag that says "I'm a good nerve--do not cut me!"There will be no improvement until either damaged nerves heal enough to restore sensation, or enough time has passed to determine that the nerve to the numb area has been irretrievably cut and the numbness is permanent. Fortunately, the brain diminishes the numbness response awareness over time, and other tiny nerves do partially restore "other" sensation. Be patient with yourself, and your surgeon! Best wishes! Dr. Tholen