Vertical Mammaplasty: Update and Appraisal of Late Results

Abstract

Vertical mammaplasty was evaluated after 10 years of experience and the study of 250 personal consecutive cases, and a few minor technical modifications are presented. In the beginning, the main advantage of the technique seemed to be the reduced amount of scarring, as this technique avoids submammary scars. With more experience, the major advantages seem to be its adaptability to breasts of various sizes and shapes and its good, consistent, and stable results. Liposuction is useful and reliable, but it cannot be applied to all fatty breasts because fat is sometimes intimately mixed with parenchyma and cannot be reached by a blunt cannula. Vertical mammaplasty raises many questions among surgeons. The most frequent were collected and answered in this report. (Plast. Reconstr. Surg. 104: 771, 1999.)