Can you breastfeed after a breast augmentation? What does the science show?
The answer is most women can, but there does seem to be some impairment, and some of that is dependent on what type of surgery you have (where your incision is, if you put the implant under the muscle, etc).
This was an article in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal July 2023. “Breastfeeding Outcome and Complications in Females with Breast Implants: A Systematic Review and Meta Analysis.” They did a meta analysis of 4 prospective and 7 retrospective studies, which had 8197 patients.
Findings:
- 82.25% of breast augmentation patients could breastfeed vs. 88.45% of those without implants.
- Complications included pain, mastitis, insufficient or excessive lactation, adn nipple inversion.
Other points they brought up in their discussion:
- There is a lack of high quality studies.
- Many women who had breast augmentation were unable to exclusively breastfeed, and had to supplement.
- It should be emphasized surgery technique is important. The periareolar incision is associated with insufficient lactation because of severing of milk ducts. Putting the implant under the muscle is beneficial to breastfeeding and has lower capsular contracture rates
- Saline vs silicone implants did NOT affect ability to breastfeed
- Lactation mastitis was 11-20% in non augmented breastfeeding females. Studies on breast augmentation rates of mastitis varied by study, some showing lower rates.
What do I think?
I think it is a good idea to figure out what the affect is of breast surgery on future ability to breastfeed. It reaffirmed for me to do the incision under the breast in the inframammary fold and go under the pectoral muscle which I started doing primarily as my technique after the biofilm / capsular contracture studies came out in support of the IMF incision and putting the breast implant under the muscle to lower risk of capsular contracture.