In this video, Dr. Gavin Sandercoe of Norwest Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery in Sydney talks in length about breast reduction surgery.

The most common complaint from women with large breasts he says is back and neck and shoulder pain, bra straps cutting into shoulders, sweating and inability to wear nice clothes. At the preliminary stage, Dr. Sandercoe discusses with his patients about taking out breast tissue, where they want the volume to be and how much skin can be left over.

In Australia, it is mandatory that all breast tissue goes to the pathologist for testing and there are 1 to 3,000 chances of the tissue being malignant.

After breast reduction surgery, patients are rid of the pain and they get to wear nice bras and clothes. However, heavier women, once they get to see their tummy after breast reduction Sydney want to go on to abdominoplasty to get a six pack look.

The common complaint from women are, that want breast reduction are back and neck shoulder pain, the cutting in of the bra straps into their shoulders, managing the sweating between the bra and their abdominal skin during summer and their inability to wear nice clothes or the fact that their breasts are out of proportion to the rest of the shape of their body.

When I discuss things with women that want breast reduction, the most important thing that they need to know is, their breast skin and breast volume determines the amount of breast reduction take out without doing a complete mistake to me. The more breast tissue that we take out, the more likely there’ll be damage to the sensory nerves in the breast. And generally speaking we have discussions about where they want the volume, how I’m going to keep it, how much skin is left over.

Probably, the most important thing about breast reduction is, all breast tissue in Australia really gets sent off to be tested by the pathologist. There is a 1 in 3,000 risk that we’re going to get a phone call from the pathologist that he did notice that there are cells that do not look very good and we need to refer to a breast oncologist if that’s the case. I have had that phone call once in my career for someone who is 80.

Most patients that have had breast reduction tell me that they are now able to wear nice bras, rather than nano bras, G and H cup breasts. They tell me that I never promised to get rid of neck, back and shoulder pain especially in an older lady who has been dealing with large breasts since they were 15 or 16, 40 to 50 years of drag on their neck and all the ligaments and discs in their spine. So I never promise but there is a very very high strike rate of women coming back in the first week saying, my pain is gone, it’s been wonderful.

The other thing that many women say is that they are wearing clothes that are much more in tune with the rest of their body shape. That makes it, one thing I do warn all breast reduction women about, if you are on the heavier side and once you have reduced your breasts and start seeing your tummy like you’ve never seen it before, and that leads to a number of people to go on from a breast reduction to an abdominoplasty just to sort out this tummy that they have never actually been aware of because their breasts been hanging on it.

There is a lot of stuff that we do plastic surgery that gets fluffed off as being a cosmetic operation. And that‘s certainly not the case with you know abdominoplasty and breast reduction and things like that. We often have patients coming back saying look I’ve got real functional changes that have happened since my breasts have been offloaded, or my six pack muscles back together again.

You know that’s why we all going to surgery.