It’s kind of sad when you have breasts that just don’t compliment your body. It’s even sadder when your breasts do not have an optimal shape, and in fact are actually tuberous breasts.

Tuberous breasts refers to a breast shape that is developmentally abnormal, but not infrequent. The breast tissue is not present all over the chest, but in fact grows from a narrow base, and centrally herniates into the base of the nipple-areola complex (NAC).

This tuberous breast growth results in a projecting, often droopy, narrow breast without a nice round or even conical shape. I mention conical because good plastic surgeons try to transform the breast into one of these shapes with augmentation and periareolar mastopexy.

If you have tuberous breasts, please be open-minded to the surgeon who recommends that both procedures, augmentation and mastopexy, will be necessary to give you a good correction of the tuberous deformity. Look at the category tuberous breasts on my website, and see how volume in the lower pole, rounding out the breast, and elevating and reducing the NAC brings the breast to normalcy.

A big problem (such as tuberous breast deformity) requires a big solution, multi-focused and well-executed. I like anatomic- shaped implants for this problem, and later down the road after the new shape is established, a patient can be converted to round silicone implants if she wishes. Many young women are born with breasts that will develop into tuberous breasts, and that is why we have plastic surgery techniques to help them.