Avoiding and Fixing Double Bubble Complications in Breast Implants

‍Former Big Brother contestant Skye Wheatley is on Trial By Kyle talking about her botched boob job. Picture: InstagramSource: Instagram

As a reference, I wrote this after reading this post: Former Big Brother contestant botched Thailand boob job

I have no idea who Skye Wheatley is. Never watched Big Brother, let alone the Australia version. Never heard of Kyle Sandiland, Trial by Kyle, or Medi Makeover.

But I do know breast augmentation - especially breast implant revision - and Skye's before and after photos in the article pretty much tell the whole story:

In the before picture, it's clear that her right breast is significantly smaller than her left breast. It's also narrower (what plastic surgeons call the base diameter) and the bottom of the right breast (the inframammary fold) sits about an inch higher than the fold on the left.

These are some pretty significant asymmetries. They can be dealt with and improved but not in the way her surgery was done. Skye says that she had her surgery in Thailand and had her breast augmentation done by a surgeon she didn't know who didn't speak English. What could possibly go wrong?

Judging from the after photo, it looks like the surgeon tried to fix the asymmetry first by lowering the right inframammary fold (a lot.) This almost never works. In order to compensate for the smaller right breast size, he also seems to have put in an implant too wide and too projecting for her breast. Doing these two things will predictably produce a double bubble, often immediately as she describes.

I would have recommended a different approach:

1. Liposuction the left breast a little bit.
2. Raise the left inframammary fold as close to the position of the right as possible without distorting it.
3. Shorten the length of skin in the bottom of the left breast to more closely match the right.

The point of these moves is to make the two breasts as similar as possible before inserting the implants (which is done at the same surgery.) Ideally, I want to be able to use the same implant size and style on both sides.

These three techniques could still be used to fix Skye's breast augmentation complication but she would also need:

1. Repair of the damaged right inframammary fold. This could likely be sutured back in place.
2. Smaller implants. The right breast implant is too big for her anatomy. Leaving it in will make a successful fix less likely and almost certainly cause more problems over time.

There are many steps you can take to choose the right plastic surgeon and minimize your chance of complications after breast implant surgery but let's start with a very basic one:

Don't travel to another country and let a surgeon you don't know and can't understand do your breast augmentation.

‍