Today in clinic I visited with a 16 y/o patient and her mother.  The young woman, who had appropriate breast development, was seeking a breast augmentation and wanted to know if I would accept her case.  I declined.  My reasoning is that adolescents and breast implants don’t mix except in very special cases.  The only time that I would consider using a breast implant in an adolescent would be for a reconstructive problem such as amastia.    

My reasoning is as follows:   Puberty is an earthquake of psychological and physiological change the aftershocks of which affect body image until an individual matures.  The end of breast development is a moving target for a young woman.   Normal weight gain experienced by females 18 to 21 years old may increase the size of a woman’s breasts.  This may reduce her dissatisfaction with breast size and interest in an augmentation procedure.  This logic is supported by the FDA’s position on silicone breast implants, and by the fact that they are approved only for women 22 y/o and older. 

Dissatisfaction with body image tends to improve as an individual ages.  In fact, dissatisfaction with a specific area such as the breast, may not be an issue by the time an individual is 18.   

Furthermore, informed consent in an individual that has not matured is a significant issue.  An adolescent is likely to have a very skewed view of cosmetic breast surgery.  She is likely to have derived her ideas about the procedure from print, movies, TV, and internet media where implants seem to provide a  “quick”  solution to improve a woman’s contours and proportions.  She is unlikely to have any understanding of the risks and complications associated with the procedure.  Lastly, the ability to truly comprehend the risks and complications associated with this procedure may not have developed in an individual that is younger than 18.  Due to the feelings of invulnerability and the risk taking behaviors that I myself went through as an adolescent, I don’t believe that if I informed an adolescent woman that she could experience an infection requiring removal of the implant that she would actually think that this could ever occur to her.  In a patient like this, an informed consent is completely invalidated.  Therefore, my counsel to adolescent women seeking breast augmentation is to sit tight until they are physically and psychologically mature. 

Our websites www.beauty-surgeon.com and www.drmckane.com have additional information and before and after photographs of breast augmentation for review.  I invite you to schedule a consultation with me if you would like to learn more about breast augmentation or about aesthetic procedures in adolescence.  Please feel free to contact our office at (713) 661-5255 if you have any questions.

-Brice W. McKane, M.D.