Robert Whitfield MDAmerica's Breast Implant Illness Expert™

Breast Lift Surgery: Nipple Complex Repositioning Explained #shorts

8 Dec 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:20

A short YouTube video by Robert Whitfield MD explaining nipple-areola complex repositioning during a breast lift. He recommends a vertical "lollipop" (vertical-lip) incision when the nipple complex sits significantly low, emphasizes that the nipple complex itself is not removed but only the superficial skin around it is excised to allow repositioning, describes that most elevation is achieved through lower-pole tissue work and suturing, and notes using fat to fill the upper two-thirds/cleavage while avoiding lateral fullness and improving chest-wall coverage in thinner patients.

Chapters

And that's evaluated. If the nipple complex is significantly lower than that, then a vertical lip that leaves the lollipop scar is typically what we would recommend that allows you to lift the nipple are complex. You do not, in the course of that procedure, ever remove the nipple complex itself. You simply are removing the top layer of skin around it. You're not damaging any of the tissues. You're simply going to just gently take the top layer of skin off around it. That allows you to help reposition it. Because all the repositioning, for the most part, we're going to do through the lower portion. And when we get a change in the position and remove that skin and then suture the tissues together, it also helps cover up the chest wall, which in many of my patients, just because they're already relatively thin and that's why they got implants in the first place, we want to make sure we do our best to cover that up. The other issue is once we get that closed and we're adding fat back, we want to fill in the upper two thirds, the cleavage area. And we don't want to really create more of the presence of tissue out into the the side of the patient. So we don't want to try to create side move, if you will.