Nipple Aesthetics

In the group of patients in whom the nipple projection (areola) is inverted into the nipple area, there are dozens of operations described for bringing the nipple projection out. However, in my personal experience, patient satisfaction after operations performed without cutting the milk ducts in the nipple is quite low. For this reason, I do not recommend an operation to bring out the nipple to my patients who do not yet have children and who wish to breastfeed. In some of these patients, when the baby is feeding it can take the nipple area into its mouth and suck milk from the projecting part. In addition, even if the baby is not successful at feeding, the mother can give her breast milk to her baby by expressing it. In this way, while milk, which is very beneficial for the baby and has no substitute, reaches the baby, the mother's pain also passes because the breasts that fill under the influence of hormones are emptied, and her emotional bond with her baby becomes even stronger. In addition, even if the breasts are emptied by expressing, the risk of mastitis (inflammation of the breast), which would otherwise be likely to develop in the breast, is reduced.

In patients who have completed breastfeeding, on the other hand, with tissues slid under the nipple that has been released by cutting the milk ducts and brought out, the nipple is prevented from retracting again, and it may also be possible to narrow somewhat the nipple area that widened during breastfeeding.

To my patients who want an inverted nipple to be brought out during breast reduction or lift operations, I recommend that these procedures be performed in different sessions. In operations in which the position of the nipple is changed, there is always a greater or lesser risk of the nipple's circulation being impaired; since increasing this risk further by adding an operation to bring out the nipple projection does not seem to me an appropriate idea, in my own practice I do not perform the two operations at the same time.