On this episode of Carpools & Cannulas: Modern Motherhood and Plastic Surgery, Dr. Kat Gallus and Dr. Greer break down the technique of breast lift. They discuss what works, what are realistic expectations from a breast lift, and what the recovery time is like. Bonus content – how to remove foreign bodies from your child’s nose!
Transcript
Dr. Gallus: Hi, everybody. This is Dr. Gallus, and I have OR hair today. And I’m online for “Carpools & Cannulas” episode, I don’t know, like, 11 or something, where I hope I’ll be joined by Dr. Greer shortly. There she is. And we can talk about breast lifts. So I’m sure she’ll be joining in a second. Dude, I gotta fix my hair. She should be coming on in two secs. This is like, also known as… Hey.
Dr. Greer: Hey. How are you?
Dr. Gallus: I’m good. I’m stamping your style today. I’m like, doing a bun.
Dr. Greer: The perma-bun? Yeah. My hair is like, down to… It’s ridiculously heavy. So it’s always in a bun.
Dr. Gallus: Takes it off. So how are you?
Dr. Greer: I am good. I just finished putting together a new bed for my son’s room. So…
Dr. Gallus: Oh. Are we getting… Is it a change in like, style or size, or?
Dr. Greer: He had a full. We got a king because when my husband gets up with the baby, I usually sleep in one of the kids’ rooms, and now I have like two kids in with me. And a full is not enough for three people. So his room is huge though. It’s got a full and a king in there together.
Dr. Gallus: Oh, my God.
Dr. Greer: It’s enormous. I’ve just given up.
Dr. Gallus: Wow. Yeah, I know.
Dr. Greer: I’m like, “Whatever, we’ll get a bigger bed.”
Dr. Gallus: I know. Just one giant mattress covering the floor, and then everybody can just pile on, right?
Dr. Greer: It’s fine. Yup, dog too. Exactly.
Dr. Gallus: Yes. I know. Somebody watched our dog while we were in Hawaii and they’re like, “Oh, no.” Because they have a dog as well. They’re like, “Our dog sleeps downstairs in the, like, basement on her bed.”
Dr. Greer: Oh, oh.
Dr. Gallus: I was like, “Oh.”
Dr. Greer: Oh, our dog has a footstool on the end of the bed. So he can get up more easily.
Dr. Gallus: That’s right. To accommodate. It’s ADA compliant for the dog.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. I mean, it’s a big height for a Schnoodle.
Dr. Gallus: That’s hilarious. So all right. Well, are you ready to chat about some breast lift?
Dr. Greer: I love breast lifts. I love them.
Dr. Gallus: All right. I like doing them too. Today I did a breast reduction, which people often, you know, there is some confusion. Sometimes people want… They’re thinking that when they come in for a breast reduction that I also won’t lift the breast which is…
Dr. Greer: Yeah. And it’s like an intrinsic part of the surgery. You literally can’t reduce them without lifting them in some way.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah, yeah. So yeah. So lifting the breast is really about recreating the shape. So what’s your, like, what’s your go-to technique?
Dr. Greer: I often… It just depends because people don’t necessarily understand, but you’ve got like, lift on one end of the spectrum and reduction on the other. And it really just depends on how much tissue you take off. So if I’m really just doing lift and I don’t wanna take off any tissue, I will do the auto-augmentation with that wedge of tissue from the lower pole like, if somebody’s had kids and they’re kinda deflated, or just doesn’t wanna be smaller. Otherwise it’ll just wedge out tissue all the way up to like, a superior medial, rotating things in. How about you?
Dr. Gallus: Okay. Yeah. Pretty similar. And so yeah. So superior medial just means, like, when you’re rearranging things or removing things, it’s important to make sure the blood supply to the thing that is just around.
Dr. Greer: The nipple. Yeah.
Dr. Gallus: And so most important is the nipple, the nipple areola complex, so that’s the areola. And there’s a couple of different techniques. The most common, I think, are superior medial pedicels. So leaving the nipple areola complex, the blood supply on that top part of the breast, leaving it attached there.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. Which is nice because it stays up where it’s attached.
Dr. Gallus: Old school was leaving it attached to the lower part of the breast, which is usually the part you’re trying to ditch, but it was just how that surgery had evolved, and was long considered safe.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. That’s how I was trained. I came out of residency doing inferior pedicles, which is so funny because then you really learn about blood supply and now when I do a superior medial pedicle… So the inferior pedicle, there’s one tiny little vessel feeding that whole thing. It’s just itty-bitty and the superior medial, they’re coming in from the top and the side, superior and medial in fact. And it’s just, it’s a nicer operation. I feel like the blood supply is more robust and the long-term results, I think are a little bit better.
Dr. Gallus: A hundred percent and I agree. And I think now, I think maybe 20 years ago if you asked a room of plastic surgeons what technique you would do, 80-plus percent would say inferior pedicle. And now it would be the reverse of that because of all the things you mentioned. The blood supply is better, unlike, you know, we thought. And I always tell patients, “Listen, we’re trying to preserve it on the tissue we wanna preserve, which is your upper medial portion of your breast?” No one’s like “Oh, I’m too cool here, you know, realistically,” right? “I don’t want cleavage.”
Dr. Greer: I really want it, like, bottom down.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. “I want all my breasts on the outside, like, in my armpit. That would be great.” And everyone’s probably went to some near their armpit. So…
Dr. Greer: Yeah. Just fall into the side. Well, and the other thing I love about it is I feel like I can make a smaller breast with a nice shape still because you can really reduce the tissue and do it evenly across the whole breast. It’s nice.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah. So okay. So kind of same on the blood supply issues. And then it really just depends. So let’s talk about, I guess I should back up and talk about breast ptosis or breast sagging, right? So this sort of depends on…
Dr. Greer: Yeah. Because everybody wonders… Have you heard of the pencil test? Because I hear that one from a lot of patients. If you can hold a pencil up under it, a lot of women can.
Dr. Gallus: Then they’re saggy.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. Let me… And a lot women can. That is not unusual.
Dr. Gallus: Right. I know. Yeah. So is that… Yeah. I don’t think that’s made it to the published literature, but it’s a good way of explaining like, kinda overhanging. But, yeah, I think some of it has to do with the pencil test, how much breast tissue is below that crease, which we call the inframammary fold. And then some of it has to do with nipple placement. Like, where is the nipple relative to all of that? We do have nipples high, low, pointing down at the ground, right? Those are all factored in.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. And they’re all normal variations. You don’t have to be 40 and have had three kids like me to have a downward vector. I mean, I’ve had 25-year-olds come in telling me they had 90-year-old breasts. I’m like, “No, they’re normal. I know they’re not what you want, but that’s not unusual.”
Dr. Gallus: Correct.
Dr. Greer: “So don’t feel like there’s something wrong with you.”
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. I’ve had young patients come in and say, it’s just… Also, so I recently had… Okay. My dog is joining. I recently had a young patient, like a teenager, come in for breast reduction. And you can have lower nipples or nipples that are pointing down, because depending on how fast you grew your breasts, like, the skin just doesn’t accommodate or it stretches out too fast, or even when we do a change. So yeah, it’s not an age thing per se. It’s, you know, there’s multiple factors. So yeah, I do try to factor that in and then you figure out how much is breast tissue below that crease, and then, you know, make your plan for rearranging it. And right, the three most common incisions are just around the areola, the lollipop and then…
Dr. Greer: Which has the vertical. And then the underneath, which is the anchor style.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. And I would say, I don’t do the circumareolar very often because it’s…
Dr. Greer: It like, flattens the breast a little bit. Yeah. It’s fine if, like, if you just have… Your nipple is like, a centimeter or two lower on one side, and that’s really the only difference between the breasts, but otherwise, yeah, it just kind of flattens the front of the breast. You need that vertical incision to bring it back together and lift it.
Dr. Gallus: Correct. I feel like we share the same brain sometimes, but…
Dr. Greer: We do operate a lot similarly. Like, we have very similar practices, which is funny because we’ve only met on Instagram. We live on different sides of the country.
Dr. Gallus: That’s right. Yeah. So I agree. It only works if it’s good, if it’s one or two centimeters. I’ve seen some, you know, what everybody calls botched now, but botched results where people do an augmentation and then you do the lift only with the circumareolar or… But, again, it works if you’re only going up a skosh. But if you’re trying to scooch up 5 or 6 centimeters, that just ends up stretching out. So now you have a larger areola than you started with. And you’re right, it flattens where you should be having projections. So it’s a weird shape.
Dr. Greer: It is.
Dr. Gallus: So all the things you’re trying to do, which is avoid that incision, just the trade-off is that the shape and the look are just not great.
Dr. Greer: Yes. And with those incisions, I find one of the biggest concerns is what the scars are gonna look like.
Dr. Gallus: Oh, totally, totally. So that’s really why I think the push to… So some of these patients I’ve seen that have these circumareolar incisions, I mean, I think they just weren’t, you know, “Hey, if you’re gonna do this without creating an incision, that lollipop incision and…”
Dr. Greer: Right. Just the areolar skin that’s this natural transition point between the pink and the white skin. So it hides better, but, yeah, the shape trade-off I think is not worth it. And the other thing I always remind patients, when they’re looking at before and after pictures online, those after pictures are usually three or six months out. They’re still pretty early because we’re not dragging people in a year or two down the road to tell them they look awesome, as much as we love doing that. So you know, often I don’t have one-year followup and that’s when the scars really fade nicely.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah, totally. And I see patients that had previous full lifts. And I do a lot of either breast implant removal, or revision augmentation like, exchange, and they had a lift at their original surgery. When they’re 10 or 15 years out, I’ll look at their photo real quick before I go in to see them, and I’ll be like, “Do they have… I thought you said… Do they have a lift?” And I got to get up close and personal because the scar is so fine and white, and you can’t tell. So yeah, it’s just nobody gets somebody back at 15 years to take those photos. So…
Dr. Greer: Right. But it does fade.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah, for sure. And then…
Dr. Greer: Hello. Oh, what… Just a minor bloody nose here. Are you okay?
Kid: I didn’t know to put popcorn thing in my mouth.
Dr. Greer: Wait. Did you put popcorn up your nose?
Kid: I putted a popcorn seed.
Dr. Greer: In your nose?
Kid: Yeah.
Dr. Greener: Did you get it out?
Kid: Yeah.
Dr. Greer: Okay, that’s good. Just…
Kid: I went like, in the…
Dr. Greer: Okay, that’s okay. Just hold a little pressure. Here. I’m glad you got it out. There is a trick for that, but okay. Okay, good. Minor emergency averted. Hey, can you go check on your baby sister? Thank you. It’s fine.
Dr. Gallus: Is that your son?
Dr. Greer: Oh, it’s my daughter. She apparently put a popcorn kernel up her nose, but got it out. But it bled a little. You’re good. Good job. You got it out. Strong work.
Dr. Gallus: How old is she?
Dr. Greer: She is 5.
Dr. Gallus: Oh. yeah. We still remind my now 13-year-old about the time we were doing our nails. We’re just sitting around doing, you know, nail day. And she took the little capful, we pour a little capful of acetone in there to like…
Dr. Greer: Soak them.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. She just was like, knocked it back. We’re like, “What are you…”
Dr. Greer: That’s gonna taste tremendously bad. So poison control.
Dr. Gallus: No, it ended up not being a big deal.
Kid: Mom, the seed was putted in, but I pulled it away.
Dr. Greer: Okay, good. Okay, baby. Good job. Kids are amazing.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. So you’re like, what’s the motivation to drink the acetone, the nail polish remover? Well, it’s just…
Dr. Greer: You know, I straight up remember cutting my shirt with scissors like, as a 4-year-old, because I just wondered do these cut shirts like they cut paper? And I was just like… My mom was like, “Why did you do that?” I couldn’t articulate it. I did have a reason.
Dr. Gallus: You just wanted to see what would happen.
Dr. Greer: I was very experiment-… Yeah. I mean, I had a scientific mind even at the age of 4.
Dr. Gallus: And so does your daughter. “What happens when I shove this popcorn kernel up here?”
Dr. Greer: Minor bloody nose. Yeah, now you know not to do that. That’s what she said.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah, good to know.
Dr. Greer: Good job. You’re good.
Dr. Gallus: They should really put a warning label on the popcorn. Also, don’t put it in your nose.
Dr. Greer: It’s probably on there somewhere.
Dr Gallus: I took care of a kid. I did his cleft palate repair and he was a little bit older when I did his pal-… Like, he was maybe 7 months. No. So maybe 17 months, because we usually do it around a year. Anyways, a little bit older. So he was about 17 months old and I get in the OR, and there was a lot going on with the family or whatever. So I’m not sure what the circumstances were, but it seemed very chaotic. So I go to do the palate repair and you get in there. And so for everybody who doesn’t know, cleft palate is like, the hard palate where you stick your tongue up to the roof of your mouth, there’s just a division. It doesn’t meet in the middle. So when you’re looking at it, you’re looking up at the floor of the mouth. So I go in to do the case and I’m like, “What’s…” Start picking and I pick out, like, this quarter of blue plastic that’s basically like a Welch’s fruit snack wrapper.
Dr. Greer: That’s just like, up in his nose?
Dr. Gallus: Yeah, up there. And so then I like, I do the repair, make sure there wasn’t anything else.
Kid: Is she a mom?
Dr. Gallus: And then afterwards I was, like, telling the parents, I’m like, “Hey, I found a fruit snack wrapper.” And they’re like “Oh, yeah. He sticks lots of things up there.” I’m like, “Okay. Well, he can’t right now because I need that to heal.”
Dr. Greer: And…
Dr. Gallus: Yeah, all the time and they stopped checking, I don’t know. I was like, “Okay, all righty then.” So…
Dr. Greer: Okay. Fun, fun times.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. It’s kind of random, but kids are weird like that. So okay.
Dr. Greer: Okay. Back to breast lifts. Minor distraction.
Dr. Gallus: Also, here’s our PSA, don’t put popcorn kernels in your nose, right? I mean…
Dr. Greer: Yes. And also if your kid sticks something up their nose and you cannot get it out, what you try to do is put your mouth over the other nostril and blow really hard with their mouth closed, and it can sometimes blow it out. Learned about that on Facebook.
Dr. Gallus: Nice.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. Haven’t done that one myself. Learned from other doctors on Facebook. So…
Dr. Gallus: I hope not to have to. I think I’m out of that window, but you never know.
Dr. Greer: Probably. Yeah.
Dr. Gallus: I also still remember, I was in ROTC in college and one of the guys could snort his dog tag chain up and then back out through, and then… Oh, no. Yeah.
Dr. Greer: And bring it out his mouth? Yeah. I’ve seen people do it like, up the nose, not the mouth. No. Yeah.
Dr. Gallus: It’s disgusting. Yeah. It’s not a thing.
Dr. Greer: People tricks.
Dr. Gallus: Stupid human tricks, I think. Okay. So back to breast lift. We’re talking about incision.
Dr. Greer: Yup, scars.
Dr. Gallus: So I’d say the most common is vertical and then if you have tons of excess skin, then we’ll probably do an anchor. Even if you already have an anchor incision, I don’t often use that, but…
Dr. Greer: It just kind of neatens things up a little bit.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah, absolutely. It provides ample shape. We didn’t cover noninvasive breast lift because mostly I think it doesn’t exist.
Kid: Is there a nose medicine?
Dr. Greer: I’m gonna have to talk to you after. Okay?
Kid: Is there a nose medicine?
Dr. Greer: I don’t have any nose medicine. Sweetie, can you go ask daddy for help. I’m on Instagram. She wants a nose medicine.
Dr. Gallus: Oh. Aquaphor.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. Wow, this is, like, the most distracting. It’s cool though. Yeah. Are there really noninvasive lifts? I mean, I guess you can do some liposuction, but you’re not gonna get that skin retraction. And that’s usually the problem.
Dr. Gallus: Right. So liposuction, I’ve seen people lecture on that. It’s really hard to do. It’s also a gamble because you don’t know how much is breast tissue, how much is fat.
Dr. Greer: Right. And that breast tissue is fibrous. You cannot liposuction that out.
Dr. Gallus: It’s not, not gonna get lipoed. I’ve seen Dr. Roger Khouri has tried to do… I saw him demo it. It did not catch on. It was probably 10 years ago.
Dr. Greer: He’s the Bravo guy, right?
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. I mean, he’s an outside the box thinker. God bless him. I don’t know who he gets to do this, patient-wise, was using basically a super long suture on a ginormous needle and like, sticking it in subcutaneously to, like, tighten up. And I was like, “Okay. Nope, doesn’t work.”
Dr. Greer: Shocking.
Dr. Gallus: And then the last is the… I know people have been using noninvasive. So they’ve done it with Thermi, there’s Dr. Diane Duncan in Colorado will do it with Renuvion, and somebody else will also do it. I feel like they might call it body tight.
Dr. Greer: Those get nice dermal tightening, but, again, the issue is really the shape of the gland. And it’s that…
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. It gets you a tiny little bit of lift. I mean, minimal. So yeah.
Dr. Greer: I’m a big fan of just…
Dr. Gallus: That’s what I’m saying, everyone is looking for the incision-less. Oh, and thread lifts. Have you seen that done?
Dr. Greer: In the breast? No. Actually, someone just asked me today what I thought of them in the face and I’m like, “They’re not super reliable. They’re had to get out if they’re asymmetric.” Yeah.
Dr. Gallus: They’ve tried them everywhere, above the knees, for the booty. So yeah, when you’re fighting gravity like that, there really is no non-invasive treatment. But people are always looking for one because it would be nice to do a scarless breast lift, but it just hasn’t happened yet.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. It’s like that scarless mole removal everybody’s hoping for. It’s just not, not working. Yeah. But the thing is, like, the scars fade well and the shape is what’s gonna be more noticeable. So yeah.
Dr. Gallus: Right. For sure.
Dr. Greer: But I mean, I’m obviously biased because I do a ton of breast lifts.
Dr. Gallus: And then would you say… So the two… I would say the two most common things that are combined with the breast lift are either fat transfer or augmentation, right?
Dr. Greer: I honestly, you know, I do not do a ton of fat transfer to the breasts, occasionally for asymmetry, but usually people wanna little bit more size increase. So usually aug for me.
Dr. Gallus: Okay. Augmentation. Yeah. I would say that’s the number one, a lift with an augmentation. I’d also say a close number two for me is removal with a lift.
Dr. Greer: Of implants. Right.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. Because if you’ve had implants in for any, you know, they’ve stretched out the tissues. So taking them out, it would be nice if everything bounced back, but it usually doesn’t it. You’re usually older than when you started, maybe you had kids, all of those things. So I commonly do that as well, take them out and then the lift.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. Just to tighten that skin envelope back up and reshape it.
Dr. Gallus: Right. And then I do a fair amount of fat transfer as long as people want a little bit of upper pole fullness or a little, modest increase in volume. You get the benefit of getting liposuction, right? So you’re like, “Oh, the stubborn, you know, abdominal fat,” or, “I really hate, you know, my love handles or my thighs, or whatever it is, take that fat.” And then as long as you’re not trying to go much larger than half a cup size or cup size more, and you’re not looking for that kinda overprojecting upper pole, and I think it’s a good option.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. But it is a subtle improvement. The other thing I like to do for the upper pole is I’ve been using a lot of GalaFLEX lately just to act as an internal bra.
Dr. Gallus: So do you change your pedicle? I’m gonna bore everybody for a minute. Like, or do you still use a superior medial pedicle?
Dr. Greer: I still use superior medial and then I elevate the skin flaps just at the level of the breast capsule. So they’re, you know, they’re thin in thinner women and then just suspend it like a sling so it’s tacked to the good periosteal fascia. It gives nice fullness. It makes…
Dr. Gallus: And then like, everything over it.
Dr. Greer: Yeah, and then just lay the skin back down. And it really… So I do everything the same and then I elevate those skin flaps once I’ve brought the two, the lateral and the medial pillar, back together. And I’ve done it with reductions too.
Dr. Gallus: Oh, okay. So it’s like reinforcing that. So it’s…
Dr. Greer: Yeah. It’s like holding the whole breast. It’s between the skin and the breast tissue. And it kinda makes… It makes it look like a younger breast because that upper pole fullness gets kind of flattened and deflated as we age. And it really fills that back out.
Dr. Gallus: Nice. And so you’re just leaving the medial lateral pillars are just attached to the chest wall, right?
Dr. Greer: Correct. Exactly.
Dr. Gallus: That lower, like, not connected to the superior medial pedicle, right?
Dr. Greer: Right.
Dr. Gallus: Cool. And they just got bought out.
Dr. Greer: I heard that today.
Dr. Gallus: Or purchased, right? I talked to a rep and she’s like, “Oh, 90 days, I’ll be your rep and then we’ll see.” I’m like, “That’s all I heard.”
Dr. Greer: Yeah. I have to email my rep, but I just put in an order today. So at least they’ll get that for me.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. I guess they’re on board for 90 more days and then they’re all going to somewhere, I was gonna say somewhere boring, but I know that it was like, “Okay.”
Dr. Greer: You mean like Cleveland, Ohio?
Dr. Gallus: No, it was like, New Hampshire or something. It’s not Vegas. They’re not going to Vegas, but they’re all going for a meeting to, like, be like, “Okay, this is your group.”
Dr. Greer: Reorganize.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. Restructure and then they have 90 days to figure it out.
Dr. Greer: Gotcha.
Dr. Gallus: And then BD bought them, which is I think, is, who? Becton and Dickinson? I’m not sure who BD is.
Dr. Greer: I don’t know them. Yeah. I mean, I like their product a lot. A lot of people ask if it’s like the mesh used for like, TVTs and hernia repairs, and it’s not. So it’s not the mesh that’s gonna stick around or cause problems. It totally dissolves fairly fast. It just makes you lay down more collagen. And I actually did take it out in a patient once because she’d had an aug and then she had a revision, and they only put GalaFLEX on the left. And I was removing the implants and doing a lift, and I don’t wanna leave that in there for symmetry. And it’s very easy to take out. It’s just like…
Dr. Gallus: Was it still there? It doesn’t like, completely incorporate?
Dr. Greer: The GalaFLEX was totally gone. There was just this perfectly rectangular thickened area of collagen. It was amazing.
Dr. Gallus: Oh, yeah. Cool.
Dr. Greer: Would you say you use the GalaFLEX on every lift, 50% of your lifts?
Dr. Gallus: I like to offer it up whenever anybody’s really kind of hollowed out over the upper pole. I mean, it’s not, you know, it’s $1,400 just in product cost. So not everyone wants to do it, but especially in my patients who maybe have a little less skin elasticity and less upper pole fullness, I do bring it up as an option to show them, you know, this is gonna make the breast look younger as opposed to it just being higher up.
Dr. Gallus: Cool. Very nice.
Dr. Greer: I like it. I mean, I think when I get my lift down the road, I’m gonna… I’ll come in with a couple pieces of GalaFLEX and my surgeon will be like, “For the love of God, don’t bring your own implants too.”
Dr. Gallus: Put this in. I sort of remember back when… Did you do general surgery first?
Dr. Greer: No, I didn’t. I just did a combined. Yeah.
Dr. Gallus: Integrated. So for a while Seprafilm was a thing. Do you remember that stuff?
Dr. Greer: I remember that. To prevent abdominal adhesions and it was just like a gelatinous mess.
Dr. Gallus: It was a mess, but for my first C-section they were like, “We’re gonna lay a little of this in, you know, before we close.” I’m like okay, “Thanks.” But bring your own Seprafilm and hope you don’t need to come back for a bowel obstruction.
Dr. Greer: I think that seems reasonable. I pity the poor…one of my friends whom I pick as a surgeon, you’re in the running. So try to avoid me because I’m gonna like, bring my own 3D renderings from Crisalix. I’d be like, “This is what I want. I brought you some GalaFLEX.”
Dr. Gallus: I have some Instagram photos of what I’d like to have it look like. Yeah.
Dr. Greer: Yeah, totally. Also, let me tell you what pedicle I would like and how I would like you to close, which sutures you should use.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. Which sutures I would prefer. That’s hilarious.
Dr. Greer: And mix them all. Yeah.
Dr. Gallus: That’s all right. Yeah, cool. So okay. So GalaFLEX is an interesting, like, I think option for a lift. Do you use it in breast augmentation revision or do you use it…
Dr. Greer: I do, although there I’m not… So it kind of depends. I used it in a revision a couple of weeks ago where I was moving from a subglandular to a submuscular because she had cap con, and it’s nice just to close off that lateral pocket and make sure the implant stays under the muscle. And I’m using it in a tummy tuck coming up too just because they have a really thin abdominal wall, and I would like a little more robust healing.
Dr. Gallus: Nice. Okay, yeah. You are using quite a bit. Cool. Yeah. And then I saw that there’s [inaudible] right now, but I haven’t.
Dr. Greer: Yeah, I haven’t learned, I was literally on the website looking at sizes and saw that, and wondered what it is. I’ll have to ask my rep before his 90 days.
Dr. Gallus: Before they leave and then you have to like, start all over again. Yeah, it’s a bummer. So well, it’s probably a good time to see, if anybody has any suggestions for what we can talk about next time, by all means, like, put that in the comments. We’d love to…
Dr. Greer: Or if you have requests of fun tricks our kids can do like drinking acetone or putting popcorn kernels up their nose while we’re on Instagram because that’s…
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. We can see if we can have that arranged.
Dr. Greer: I know. I was telling a patient today, she said, “I saw you on TikTok.” I’m like, “You could play a drinking game out of my TikTok if you just take a swig every time one of my kids appears behind me and throws a peace sign.”
Dr. Gallus: And tries to interrupt.
Dr. Greer: Yeah, they just pop up. They photo bomb all the time. It’s fantastic.
Dr. Gallus: Yeah. So just let us know, DM us, or pick your up next for hosting, and then we’ll figure out a topic. I’m sure there’s things we can discuss. I’m trying to think. A breast lift, we’ve done. We’ve done breast aug. We can talk about recovery after something, we haven’t done that.
Dr. Greer: Yeah. I mean, we could talk about tummy tuck recovery. That’s always a big question. I feel like people think it’s gonna be a lot worse than it is or that they’re gonna be, like, not working out for two months.
Dr. Gallus: Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. It’s always hard to know where people are coming from because their expectations are either, I have patients who, like, text me a couple weeks later and they’re like, “So I can Peloton?” I’m like, “No.”
Dr. Greer: No, no. I had one lady, bless her heart, delivering Avon the next day. I’m like, “Go home and sleep.”
Dr. Gallus: Yeah, right. Yeah. Having people, like, take it easy is important. But then there’s other patients who are like, “Oh, I won’t be able to do anything for three months.” And you’re like, “No, you’ll be okay.”
Dr. Greer: No, you can actually go back to work. Yup. It’s okay.
Dr. Gallus: Absolutely.
Dr. Greer: Awesome.
Dr. Gallus: All right. Well, maybe we’ll talk about recovery. And we can start with tummy tuck recovery and maybe we can cover a couple different common recovery questions.
Dr. Greer: Absolutely.
Dr. Gallus: I think that’s reasonable.
Dr. Greer: Cool.
Dr. Gallus: All right. Well, I think we can wrap it up and you can go make sure that nose is okay. I put Aquaphor on everything.
Dr. Greer: I know. That’ll probably be my nose medicine.
Dr. Gallus: Nose medicine.
Dr. Greer: A little Vaseline. It’s fine. I’m just that proud she was bleeding and came to me very calmly. She’s like, “I’m bleeding, shoved this up my nose.”
Dr. Gallus: “My nose is bleeding.”
Dr. Greer: It’s fine. Very calm.
Dr. Gallus: Goodness. All right. Well, have a good night on a bed full.
Dr. Greer: You too. I’ll see you in a couple weeks.
Dr. Gallus: Okay, all right. Bye.
Dr. Greer: Bye.
About Restore SD & Dr. Katerina Gallus
As the Director of Restore SD Plastic Surgery, board certified female plastic surgeon Dr. Katerina Gallus has over 15 years of experience helping San Diego women enjoy head to toe rejuvenation with face, breast and body procedures. After a successful career as a Navy plastic surgeon, Dr. Gallus founded Restore SD Plastic Surgery with the intention of creating a welcoming space for anyone seeking cosmetic enhancement.
Restore SD Plastic Surgery offers popular facial rejuvenation procedures like facelift & neck lift, facial fat grafting, and eyelid lift; breast augmentation with implants, breast lifts or breast reduction; body contouring procedures such as tummy tuck, liposuction, mommy makeover, and Brazilian butt lift (BBL), as well as aesthetician services, BOTOX, injectable fillers, and laser treatments.
