I recently performed a breast reduction on a patient who returned on her one week visit upset about the way she looked. In particular, this patient had a large reduction, thus to reduce her breast scar length I closed her wounds in a manner that caused significant puckering of the skin. She was not ready for the look of it. I showed her pictures of other patients with similar looking wounds right after surgery and three months later when everything settled down and you could barely see the scar. But I could still tell she was terrified and scared that she was going to spend the rest of her life with terrible scars. So… the lesson learned: I have to stress to patients that right after surgery they will not look pretty, but things will settle down. Swelling and bruising that will take up to 4 weeks to go away, and it takes about 3 months for tissues to settle down before the real final appearance is seen….
Martin Jugenburg,MD, FRCSC
Toronto, ON
