First Things First:
What You Need To Know and How To Go About Finding It
“If you want to make the best decisions for your future, you will consider at least ten topics... before you think about the only three decisions that a less-informed patient considers.”
Before we go into detail about the many different options and choices in breast augmentation, let’s start by making a shopping list of what you need to know. Then we will give you a guide for learning what you will need to know. Armed with your shopping list and your guide, you can better explore each step in detail. Before you climb the stairs, we will give you a look at the entire staircase.
You need to know the answers to more than three questions.
When considering augmentation, many women focus only on three basic questions:
- What cup size am I going to be? (What size implant?)
- Where will the incision be?
- Will my implant be over the muscle or under the muscle? Or maybe the newest option, dual plane (more about dual plane later), partly over and partly under muscle to maximize benefits and minimize trade-offs of the other pocket locations?
Why these three questions? For many patients, these are the only issues they ever hear from friends, other patients, and the media. Believe it or not, many patients only hear about the first two. They don’t ask. They often don’t know what to ask. Regrettably, some surgeons don’t volunteer information about choices and options. Some surgeons are not committed to patient education. If you don’t know, if you don’t care to ask, and if your surgeon doesn’t help as much as possible, the result can be less-than-optimal decisions.
WEAK TEAM PREPARATION can lead to BAD TEAM DECISIONS.
We want good team decisions. Good team decisions begin with you.
If you aren’t armed with knowledge, one member of the team is weak—you. Without the basics, why bother researching surgeons? You won’t be able to distinguish fact from fluff. If you can’t evaluate a surgeon, you will likely not select the best surgeon for you. Then another member of the team is weak—the surgeon. Two weak team members increase the chances of weak or bad team decisions
If you want to make the best decisions for your future, you will consider at least ten topics... before you think about the only three decisions that a less-informed patient considers.