How long will I take to recover after breast implant surgery?

As with any form of cosmetic surgery, you will have some pain after the procedure. The pain is definitely tolerable and able to be controlled with pain killers.

How soon you can return to work mainly depends on your pain threshold and what type of work you do. If you can tolerate moderate pain and work in an office environment, then you may be able to return to work the next day, as some of my patients have done. If your pain threshold is low, or you have a very physical job, such as a personal trainer, then you may want to stay away from work for a longer period.

Breast augmentation with implants causes more pain in the breasts than breast augmentation with fat grafting, but with fat grafting you will have pain in the areas where your fat was harvested from. With breast implants, you will have minimal to no bruising, however, with fat grafting you will have bruising for about 2 weeks.

Fat grafting can be a good option for women who have breast fed because the breast tissue has already been expanded to allow fat to be grafted. It also gives you a very natural augmentation, however, you may need more than one session to achieve your desired size. Hope this helps.

For breast augmentation with implants, I usually tell my patients to plan for a week off work. However, most patients feel well enough to return to work before the week is up.

Patients recover faster and feel less pain after subglandular (implant is placed above muscle) compared to submuscular (implant is placed under muscle). Either technique has its own advantages and disadvantages. I think its good to have a discussion with your plastic surgeon about which technique to use.

In my practice, since I starting using Motiva implants, I have been using more subglandular technique as these implants negate some of the disadvantages of subglandular placement.

For breast augmentation with fat grafting, I tell my patients to plan 2 weeks off work. The longer time off work is to allow more time for bruising and swelling to settle. There is bruising and swelling both where I take the fat from and in the breasts and, so that accounts for the longer recovery time.

However, I wouldn't say it is a lot more painful and nothing beats fat in how soft and natural the breasts feel after recovery. So again, have a discussion and explore your options.

Pain after breast augmentation regardless of any technique is usually well managed with oral pain killers. There are very effective ones available nowadays.

Thank you for your question!

Breast implant surgery is a simple day surgical procedure that should not require a long leave of absence.

Downtime can refer to return to work, return to light exercise and return to normal activities, such as going to the gym, yoga or simply carrying a young child.

On average, my breast implant patients return to office-based work in 2 to 3 days, and go back to light exercise in a week and normal activities in 2-3 weeks. They are able to shower on the night of the surgery itself.

The main factor that affects downtime would be the amount of post-surgical pain; everything else such as swelling, bruising and the breast band can be concealed under regular clothing.

The key to controlling post-surgical pain is gentle surgical technique, minimal bleeding and a good anaesthetic nerve block.

Certainly implant size and placement also affects but that is already pre-determined, i.e. no one chooses smaller implants so as to have less pain, rather one chooses the best implant to achieve the best possible result.

A surgeon that takes a long time to perform the surgery, causes a lot of intra-operative trauma or bleeding is likely to result in significant pain after surgery.

Best regards,

Dr Samuel Ho