Trish: I’m here today with Dr. John Newton, who’s a plastic surgeon from the Newcastle area. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.
Dr. John Newton: My pleasure, Trish. Thank you for having me.
Trish: Lovely. I just want to have a chat to you about some of the procedures that you do in your surgery. Today particularly I want to talk to you about breast reduction. Can you tell us a little bit about what the procedure involves and how long it takes and just what someone would like to know?
Dr. John Newton: I think the first thing is having a breast reduction, is it’s a fantastic operation. Big bossums, which I like to call them, which have troubled them sometimes since they were young teenagers. Its a really troublesome thing for some women and even for some really young women. A breast reduction, I think is really almost a no-lose operation for most patients.
First thing is to know is that breast reduction is great surgery. It can change their lives and make them much, much more comfortable physically, it relieves shoulder and neck pain, back pain, reduce the sweating they get underneath their breasts. For some, it will make them a lot less embarrassed.
Trish: I’m that person. I’ve had a breast reduction myself and it totally changed my life. I totally understand. Are there different techniques that people can choose to have? Or is there one-size-fits-all kind of thing?
Dr. John Newton: No, I think a great presentation was given a few years ago by Chad Williams, when he presented 36 different techniques on breast reduction that he’d carried out. Chad has essentially gone through all of that and come back to the inferior pedicle reduction, which is probably the most common procedure performed worldwide. In this country, at the moment, possibly at least as common would be a central vertical scar operation. Where there is no breast scar. So that’s probably …
Trish: So no scar under here?
Dr. John Newton: No scar underneath. I think there are pros and cons. At present, I have gone through some evolutions, not as many as Chad I guess. I’ve come back to using a modified[inaudible 00:02:23] so you will have a scar underneath, but the key to the way I do it, is that there’s more internal operating on the breast tissue which allows me to re-create essentially a shaped breast implant shaped by tissue. We have an anatomically shaped mound of breast tissue within the chest, which I then move up the chest wall and then, I close the tissue. I actually think this has revolutionized, for me, my results.
It’s a procedure that, it seems, that at least one other surgeon I know of has started doing. We’ve talked about this and we’re both very happy with the way it works. Because it really does do things. It does do the reduction, but it produces quite an increased degree of perkiness as opposed to the other techniques that I’ve used. That’s why I like that one. It takes a tiny bit longer, not much longer. It’s perhaps a tiny bit more invasive than the other techniques, but not much, not enough to trouble you over. Much better results and I’m very proud of the reductions I’ve done.
Trish: Is it a myth or is it truth that after you’ve had a breast reduction your boobs can actually grow back?
Dr. John Newton: It’s truth for some. I think these are surprising people. They’re rare, but some people’s breasts do grow back. It can relate to simple weight gain. There are certain individuals that I can probably say on one hand, the number that I’ve actually seen, where there’s definitely an increase, a substantial increase in breast volume. One or two years to five to seven years down the track without substantial increase in percentage of body fat. It does happen. It’s not common.
Re-operation isn’t common. The re-operation rate in my hands would probably be less than 1 or 2%. That’s for … the result has changed with time, but they are nearly all girls who have had the breast reduction before they had their families and so they’ve all gone through that thing of having babies, getting bigger, shrinking again and the changes that come with that.
The girls who have had their breast reductions later in life, the re-operation rate is absolutely minimal. The regrowth rate is also extremely low, unless the person gains a lot of weight. Then, what happens is you see an increase in their breast volume, but you also see an increase in the entire body. That gets real tricky because the answer to that is weight-reduction, not breast-reduction. So you make their “boozies” smaller and you end up with somebody who’s all tummy and no breast, and that’s not right either.
Trish: That’s true. That’s great. Well, thank you so much for that.
Dr. John Newton: It’s been my pleasure, Trish.
Trish: If you’re around the Newcastle or Lake Macquarie area and you’re looking for a breast-reduction, I definitely suggest you go and see Dr. Newton. You can drop us an email if you like at [email protected] or click on the link below this video.
Thank you so much.
Dr. John Newton: Thanks, Trish. Thank you very much.
Trish: Thanks.
Further Reading Related to Breast Reduction Surgery
- Breast Reduction Melbourne by Dr Carmen Munteanu FRACS (Plas)
- Will Medicare cover my surgery? – Michael Kernohan
- Does Medicare Cover Breast Reduction Surgery?
- Can I Use My Super For My Plastic Surgery?
- Breast Reduction by Dr. Guy Watts | Plastic Surgeon Perth
- Breast Reduction Sydney – Soliman Plastic Surgery