Concepts in Breasts Aesthetics

What are we aiming for in Breast Aesthetics?

Good question! You would think that after more than 15 million breast augmentation procedures in the world and literally countless other breast procedures that we would have good guidelines as to what sort of breast aesthetic we may be aiming to achieve. Now this article should be read with an element of skepticism as we all know that different people view the same thing very differently and this is not a bad thing as it is one of the things that makes us unique. It will obviously also differ with differing time periods as the changing trends of fashion, body shape, etc.
That all being said until recently there was very little science behind our theories because it was poorly studied. Sounds crazy but it is true. Intuitively we think we know desired breast aesthetics, but it was only in 2012 that two British plastic surgeons put it to the test and did a survey of the general population and plastic surgeons to try and delineate these features (full reference below).

Until recently no research had delineated features of the modern opinion of breast aesthetics.

The essence of the research article are the following 3 points:

---

1. The proportion of the breast which is above the nipple vs below the nipple is ideally 55:45 (See fig 1)
2. The lower pole should be fuller and more round than the upper pole with the angle of the nipple pointing at 20 degrees above the horizontal (See fig 2)
3. The upper pole should be full such the line in the oblique photo is either straight or slightly concave (slight hollow) rather than convex (ie bulging out) (See fig 3)

Reference:

Mallucci P, Branford OA. Concepts in aesthetic breast dimensions: Analysis of the ideal breast. JPRAS 2012;65:8-16

This opinion piece was brought to you by Dr Damien Grinsell