Breast Asymmetry After Surgery: What's Normal?

Let's talk about asymmetries and what to expect after breast surgery.

Every single patient I operate on has a variety of asymmetries. They have differences in:

• Nipple position
• Breast crease height
• Breast volume
• Breast projection
• Chest wall shape

Often you don't notice your own asymmetries because you're so used to them — it's just who you are. But as a surgeon, it's very important that I see and document them before surgery.

We always do our best to get everything as symmetric as possible. But it's important to understand that by fixing one type of asymmetry, you can often make another type more noticeable.

It's a dance to get things as symmetric as possible, and you can never achieve absolute perfection. Some degree of asymmetry is completely normal in every human body.

When evaluating a patient after surgery, we're always going to find some asymmetries. The question is: is that asymmetry normal and within expected limits, or is it something that needs to be addressed?

That depends on:

• What did you look like before surgery?
• What kind of asymmetries did you have preoperatively?
• What surgery was performed?
• What did we expect to happen to those asymmetries?

If your surgeon is telling you your result is normal, that means it's what they would expect given your anatomy and the surgery that was performed.

It's never a bad thing to go over your before and after photos with your surgeon, assess your preoperative asymmetries, and talk about why certain differences didn't fully resolve — or recognize that maybe they actually did improve more than you realize.

The key is open communication. Your surgeon has the context of your anatomy and what was done in the operating room — and they're your best resource for understanding your result.