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  • Three Categories of Breast Lifts Provide Different Results
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Hi, I'm Larry Schlesinger and I'm a board-certified plastic surgeon from Honolulu, Hawaii, and the question for today is, "What is a breast lift?"

Breast lift, and the technical term is mastopexy. Masto means breast. Pexy means lift. A breast lift is a reduction of excess tissue, lifting the breast up normally from a position hanging below the inframammary fold to a position either at the inframammary fold or even a little tighter than that, and moving the nipple up at the same time.

In a breast lift, the nipple-areolar complex is reduced in size down to either 42 or 38 millimeters. It's also moved up to where it's in a nice position about 40% up from the bottom of the breast, therefore 60% down from the top.

A mastopexy falls into three categories. Minimal lift can be done by dual plane mastopexy. That's always done with an implant, putting the implant below the muscle but releasing the tissue on top of the muscle, so that the implant itself can bulge out and raise the nipple up a little bit and also raise the tissue at the bottom of the breast up a little bit.

The secondary, number two way to do a lift is by taking excess tissue around the nipple-areolar complex, and with a permanent suitor to hold it in place, and that's called the Benelli Mastopexy. The Benelli Mastopexy is a very good in-between sort of lift.

For the most difficult lift for people who really have droopy breasts, or they're very heavy, we do the standard wise pattern, which is the anchor-scar incision around the nipple-areolar complex, a vertical line and a horizontal line.

Those three surgeries make up the universe of mastopexies or breast-lifts that I use. They can be done without implants, but unfortunately they don't look quite as good.

I'm Larry Schlesinger and I'm from Honolulu, Hawaii. Thank you very much.

Three Categories of Breast Lifts Provide Different Results

Dr. Larry Schlesinger explains what a breast lift is and what three types of breast lifts are used depending on the level of droop.