Breast Augmentation and Liposuction Blog - Dr. Bottger

How serious is your surgeon when he tells you to quit smoking in preparation for your plastic surgery? Very. If you cannot quit smoking for your breast surgery, whether it is breast augmentation or a breast lift, you put yourself at risk for serious postsurgical complications. How serious?

Consider the recent memoir by Dr. Anthony Youn, who talks about the potential complications related to smoking around breast surgery. He says he has personally seen a woman's nipples almost turn black and fall off following a breast lift. When the woman's nipples turned purple, the precursor to black, they used the only treatment option available to save her nipples: leeches.

Why leeches? The problem with smoking is that it impairs your body's ability to remove blood from a treatment area, especially in the skin, and when the blood can't be removed, it prevents the supply of fresh blood from reaching the area, so the tissues will die. Leeches remove the excess blood so fresh blood will flow. Leeches give your body time to grow new blood vessels to replace the failed ones. To work properly, the leeches may have to be applied for several days.

This is less common in breast augmentation, but tissue necrosis (death) is a tangible risk whenever a smoker has surgery. So when your surgeon tells you to quit, take that recommendation seriously.

Another recommendation to take seriously is to always work with a board-certified plastic surgeon. In Philadelphia, please contact plastic surgeon Dr. David A. Bottger for a consultation today.

Labels: breast augmentation, complication