Breast augmentation with implants creates a weight imbalance that can cause spinal postural alterations and affect performance of certain simple tasks. Yet according to researchers in Italy, the effects of increased weight of the breasts on static posture after implant breast augmentation have not been investigated.
Thus, a team headed by Giovanni Nicoletti, M.D., of the Department of Clinical Surgical Diagnostic and Paediatric Sciences at the University of Pavia in Italy, recruited 40 healthy woman volunteers. They were asked to wear weighted breast implants — 800 g (1.76 lbs.), 400 g (0.9 lbs.) and 300 g (0.6 lbs.) — in a sports bra for six hours and 30 minutes, one day for each implant size, as they carried out daily life activities. Posture changes were assessed with the association of a physiatric clinical examination and a static-force platform analysis.
What They Found
The researchers found that there was a significant increase in cervical lordosis after wearing 400 g implants. The alteration was stable between the 400 g and 800 g implants, indicating that the 400 g implant might be the load threshold that breaks the cervical postural physiologic balance. A significant increase in lumbar lordosis was seen only after the use of the 800 g breast implants. The static-force platform assessment demonstrated a worsening of the balance independent from the visual control with the use of 400 g and 800 g implants.
“Heavy breast implants proved to induce reversible alterations in the spinal curve, and 400 g is the cutoff for functional physiologic compensation in the short term,” the authors write. “Such a weight might be considered the safety limit for the use of breast implants for cosmetic purposes.”
The authors note that their study has “obvious limitations” and write that their findings would be significantly more relevant if they “could be correlated with actual patients to see whether there is adaptation over time.” They suggest that a new prospective study should be carried out on patients undergoing augmentation mammaplasty. “Such a trial would be best conceived in a multicentric setting, but we are afraid that it might not be so easy, as, to our knowledge, the cosmetic surgery units performing implantation with very large breast implants are likely to be outside the academic and research environment.”
The study appears in the August issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
