NEVER?! Ok, almost never. There is one exception. More on that later.
The muscle involved in a breast augmentation is pectoralis major muscle. It starts at your shoulder and fans out across your chest attaching to your clavicle and your sternum. [Photo] It sits right underneath your breast. The pectoralis major is the key player with regards to placement of the implant in a breast augmentation procedure. Your plastic surgeon can make a pocket underneath the pec muscle instead of inserting the implant directly underneath your breast. Placing your breast implant underneath the muscle gives the best breast augmentation result. Here’s why:
Except maybe in one case - competitive bodybuilders.
Breast implants that are placed over the muscle can animate, meaning that when you flex or contract your pec muscle, the implant moves a little. For most women, the movement is slight, and it’s at most, a minor issue. But for a bodybuilder, this might be a problem in competition. Also, as bodybuilders weight train, the heavy weights they repetitively lift may shift the implants over time, moving them outward to the sides of the chest.
I tell my bodybuilder patients to consider putting their breast implants on top of the muscle, but that’s not exactly a perfect solution. Bodybuilders have minimal body fat and typically little breast tissue. This can make the edges of a subglandular implant very visible. So whether or not to place the implant above or below the muscle is something decided on a case-by-case basis.
Over the course of 20 years and thousands of breast augmentations, this concern has surfaced just a handful of times. It probably doesn't apply to you. Put your implants under the muscle.
*Individual results are not guaranteed and may vary from person to person.
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