What to Watch For After Your Breast Surgery

One of Dr. Yoho's children during a beach vacation

First, the surgeon may have taped areas of your breast or given you a special bra or binding to wear after your breast implant. We generally use an elastic dressing which should be removed at 24 hours, and a bra should be applied or the bra which is underneath the elastic should be left on. Checking on the breasts at 24 hours is always desirable, because one of the rare complications of breast implant surgery is blood buildup around the implant, and sometimes this has to be removed within a few days to prevent a breast capsule or hardening.

We always emphasize the following in follow-up visits: First, good support bras are exceedingly important and we really like the Bali Minimizer bra for this. There are some exceptions, so some women need to wear no bra or a bra that doesn’t offer much support for the initial period after the breast surgery.

Secondly, we recommend 800 IU of Vitamin E each day taken orally, which can be purchased at any health food store. This should be taken indefinitely and may significantly decrease the chance of hardening or capsular contracture of the breast. We also believe fish oil is a great boon to decrease inflammation and also decrease the chance of capsular contracture. We recommend a teaspoon of liquid fish oil a day, which is the equivalent of four to five of those large fish oil 1,000 mg pills taken with food, and sometimes we recommend more if the patient is starting to have trouble with a capsule for short periods of time. Note that you can buy this on vitacost.com and we recommend several brands, including Carlson’s or Nordic Naturals or Eskimo brand fish oil, all of which have very little fishy taste.

Breast wishes,

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Robert Yoho, M.D.