A short patient-facing YouTube video (Nadiri Center) in which Dr. Erica Anderson explains post-operative care after breast lift, reduction, or revisional breast surgery. She covers medications (pain and anti-nausea, and constipation risk from narcotics), diet (start light then return to normal), recommended activity (encouraged to move but avoid aggressive chest work; safe ways to lift small children), incision care and dressings, use of a front-button compression bra (no drains used), expected swelling/bruising timelines, follow-up at one week, and when to call the office for possible bleeding or asymmetry.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Dr. Erica Anderson and I'm the breast and body specialist here at the Nadiri Center. And what I wanted to go through today is the post operative instructions for if you've had breast lift, breast reduction or a lot of my revisional breast surgery. So you may have had surgery with someone else or you may have a friend who has had surgery. All of us surgeons kind of do things a little bit differently. So this video is hopefully to give you an idea of what I like you to do in your recovery phase. You've been given your pain medications. At least we gave you your scripts, so hopefully those are filled. The medications that I have for post operative care are your pain medication and your anti nausea medication. So take those as instructed as you need to. If you feel like you don't need them, then don't take them. Typically with breast lift and breast reduction, these are the. The severity of the pain is not that significant. So try to not take them if you can. If you are taking them routinely, a narcotic will lead to constipation. So make sure you have something there to help with that constipation. Should you get it as far as nutrition, what you should eat after surgery. So immediately after surgery, start with something light and then you can transition back to your normal diet. No restrictions on what you eat activity. So I don't want you to be a couch potato after surgery. I want you up and moving around and doing the things that you like to do or need to do. And that includes lifting small children if you have to. I really have no restrictions on these activities. If you do have to lift a small child, I ask that you lift them from a seated position, sort of clutch the child and then stand up as opposed to leaning over. Overall, I think you'll just feel better. That goes, be careful when you're pushing and pulling or doing anything with the chest muscles. It will be uncomfortable and could lead to some problems if you're overly aggressive. Just be smart with your activities. You can shower as you like. Your incisions, whether it's a lift or reduction, typically the incision patterns are about the same, but your scar or your incision goes around the nipple areolar complex and then a vertical plane and there may be some component along the breast crease. All of your incisions are covered by a brown tape that you can readily see through a clear plastic dressing along the breast crease. I may have placed a tape just to help redefine that breast crease for some of the revisional or some of these surgeries, those are things that you might see. You might even see some blood tinging on the brown tape. It's not a problem. I do leave the nipple free so some of that blood can leak out through the dressing. And you can have a little bit of spotting on your bra if that's the case. Sometimes you just need to put a little gauze over the nipples, but your nipples are not bleeding. It's just some blood around the incision. Speaking of bras, typically, this is the garments that I'll put you in post operatively after breast surgery. It buttons in the front. I typically put it on the tightest button in. You can adjust this if you need to, but this is going to help hold things in place and make you feel better. I don't use drains anymore for these surgeries, so this again, provides that compression so that the tissue that we've moved around is being kept in place. So wear your bra as I ask. The discomfort lasts for a couple of days, but typically in these sorts of surgeries, it's not as long as some others, but everyone's a little different. Take your pain medications as you need, limit your activity as you think is appropriate, and then I see you at about one week post op to make sure everything's healing okay. You will have swelling. So if it's a breast reduction, some people think, oh, my gosh, I'm still too big. You have to let that swelling resolve, give it time to recover. Same thing with the breast lift. They initially will be sort of distorted and not look quite right. But again, you have to give that time to recover. So all in all, I hope that this helps with your recovery. We are always a phone call away. I'm happy to hear from you if you have any questions or other things that would come up. The other things or one thing that might prompt a phone call is a bleeding problem after surgery. So if you were to notice that one breast was slightly larger or significantly larger than the other, this is one thing that I would want to hear about. So please contact our office should that happen. Otherwise, bruising and swelling are all normal and part of the process and will take months to three months to really resolve.
