Raising Expectations

By: Ruth Donnelly
Created on 05th October 2010

Cosmetic Surgery & Aesthetics Guide investigates Mr Jian Farhadi’s innovative Internal Bra Breast Lift technique

Breast lifting is one of the most popular procedures requested by women postpregnancy or after extreme weight loss, when the breasts tend to lose volume and sag. But did you know that traditional breast lift techniques only offer a temporary solution?

Mr Jian Farhadi, a consultant plastic surgeon at London’s exclusive Cadogan Clinic, has encountered this problem many times in his career: “A breast lift is designed to improve breasts that have lost volume in the upper part,” he explains.

“After a traditional breast lift, initially the breast looks great, but when you look at it again a year down the line it has dropped again so that it is heavier in the lower part and empty at the top, and women are not satisfied with that, because it has not solved the problem in the long-term.”

Frustrated by this, and wanting to offer his patients a more long-term solution, Mr Farhadi started to investigate the options available to help the breast keep its shape for longer.

“There is a procedure which uses a mesh product to create an internal bra,” he says, “but wherever possible I like to avoid inserting foreign material into the breast, because it can cause a reaction or excess scar tissue, which can make the breast lumpy.”

A eureka moment

Dissatisfied with the options already available to him, Mr Farhadi continued to perform breast lifts as usual. But five years ago, during a particularly tricky operation, an idea occurred to him.

“I was trying to do a breast lift and I just could not get a nice shape to the breasts. I tried everything, but nothing seemed to work. I decided to try using some of the excess skin I had removed to cup the breasts and hold them in place. At the end of the operation I had achieved exactly the shape I was looking for and I thought, why don’t I do this all the time?”

Shaping the future

Mr Farhadi’s technique works on the same principle as the mesh-based internal bra, which means it offers a better shape that traditional methods as well as giving a long-lasting result.

The advantage it holds over the alternative options is that it uses your own tissue, meaning there is no risk of adverse reactions or creation of excessive scar tissue.

In fact, the technique produces even less scarring than a traditional breast lift: “You still have the so-called lollipop incision, like an anchor shape,” explains Mr Farhadi, “but the lower part of the anchor is reduced. So in a traditional lift you would have a very long scar underneath the breast, but here the scar is only half the usual length.”

Another benefit of using your own tissue to form the support is that you cannot see or feel the ‘bra’ inside the breast once the operation is complete. With the mesh alternative, some patients have reported a hardness to the breast caused by the underlying ‘bra’, and the risk of excess scarring can cause lumps to form in the breast.

Aside from the obvious aesthetic implications of this, there is a more worrying problem in that these lumps could be mistaken for or mask the appearance of cysts or tumours.

Mr Farhadi does however make clear that, as with any operation to the breast, for the first six months after his procedure it will be more difficult to feel any lumps within the breast: “I advise women planning to undergo any kind of breast procedure to have a mammogram first and make sure everything is in order before having the surgery.”

Same difference

Mr Farhadi is at pains to point out that, apart from the benefit of improved shape and longevity, his technique differs very little from the more conventional breast lift procedure. Breast function is not affected and there should be no loss of sensation.

As with the usual breast lift technique, the ideal candidate for Mr Farhadi’s procedure is a woman who has finished childbearing and breastfeeding and as a result has lost a lot of volume from the top part of her breasts.

Alternatively, if you have lost a lot of weight and find yourself with empty, sagging breasts and excess skin, this could well be the ideal procedure for you.

Upping the ante

Having performed more than 200 operations using this technique in the last five years, Mr Farhadi has recently written up the procedure for publication in a medical journal.

“I had been using the technique for a long time,” he explains, “but had never got around to writing it up. Then some junior doctors told me they had started to use the technique after watching me do it and said I should write it up so more surgeons can offer it to their patients.”

So, are there any downsides to the procedure? “It adds about fifteen minutes to the operative time,” says Mr Farhadi, “but really it just combines the benefits of a normal breast lift with those of the mesh technique, except it avoids the use of any foreign material, which makes it much more appealing.”

And really, what’s fifteen minutes on the operating table if it means better breasts for a lifetime?