Male Breast Reduction

For men, having enlarged breasts can be both painful and embarrassing. Doctor Wendell Perry understands the unique cosmetic needs and concerns that men have and offers a special kind of breast reduction surgery.

What is Male Breast Reduction Surgery?

Gynecomastia, or enlarged male breasts, are actually a common cosmetic issue. Affecting either one or both breasts, sometimes unevenly, gynecomastia can also include swelling and pain in the breast tissue. Triggered by a change in hormone balance or by obesity, heredity, or use of certain drugs, Gynecomastia can lead to self-confidence issues in men, but it is a condition that is easily treated.

Male breast reduction surgery removes localized fat and excess breast tissue in order to minimize and reshape the chest contours to appear more masculine. Male breast reduction surgery is performed with two techniques: liposuction and surgical excision of tissue. These techniques can either be used separately or together, depending on the individual situation.

In most cases, using liposuction to remove excess fat is preferred, as it requires smaller incisions and can lead to shorter, less conspicuous scarring once surgery is complete. In cases of excess glandular tissue or excess skin, the surgical excision technique may be necessary, although every individual case is different.

I had a great experience with Dr. Perry and his staff! He really wanted to see my progression all the way through, and still checks in.

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Am I a Good Candidate for Male Breast Reduction Surgery?

Doctor Perry will discuss your condition with you during your consultation and help you determine whether male breast reduction surgery is the right choice for you. But typically, men who meet the following criteria are good candidates for this procedure:

Men whose gynecomastia cannot be treated through other means:

  • Individuals of general good health and stable body weight
  • Non-smokers and non-drug users
  • Men with realistic expectations of the surgery
  • Those who do not have medical conditions that could impair healing

Featured Procedure Video:

Video Transcript:

Today, we’re going to talk about male liposuction. Every man hates the love handles, wants a flatter stomach, and wants a six-pack. The answer for that is liposuction. What we’re doing with liposuction is, we are attacking these problem areas. Problem areas of fat are areas that have a high concentration of fat cells. So, since there’s a higher concentration of fat cells in those problem areas, in the love handles when calories come in the body, we store more, and we store more calories in the love handles, more calories in the stomach, we store more calories there, and we store them first. So, what we’re trying to do with liposuction is we’re trying to decrease the concentration fat cells in those problem areas.

Liposuction works because fat cells don’t replicate. Once you change the concentration of fat cells in those problem areas, they’re changed forever. If we can get the concentration in that love handle the same as the concentration in the back above it and the waist below it, then it’s going to be flat and smooth. And once you get it flat and smooth, it’s flat and smooth forever. If you get the concentrations even, if you gain weight it stays smooth and if you lose weight it stays smooth. What we’re doing with the male liposuction as opposed to liposuction with the ladies, is we’re just trying to make the muscles stand out more. The way we make the muscles stand out more is like they do the movies, in the 600 movies. They paint shadows where they want those muscles to be. What we’re doing with the liposuction is over suction in the midline, along the sides of the rectus abdominal muscles and in the indentations between the rectus muscle.

If you follow where the muscle really is, you get a natural look. If your real muscle is here and you make a line here, not so good, especially if you start to work out, now you’re gonna have two lines. So, the point is to get the muscles, the lines, and the indentations right where the real muscles are. If you do that, it looks natural. So, that’s kind of the idea of what we’re trying to do, you know with male liposuction. Physically, when you’re doing the liposuction, you’re taking a cannula and you’re coring out fat cells. So, if the muscle is here, the skin is here, the nerves and blood vessels are in between and you’re taking a cannula and coring out the fat cells between the nerves and blood vessels. So, now you’re making it solid into like a Swiss cheese or a sponge. When you do that, you’re making a raw surface inside the body, inside that hole where the fat cells were and water will weep into those holes. The water that weeps into the holes where you remove the fat cells is the swelling. I think of the swelling like just a soggy wet sponge. The way we get that to heal is to scar.

So, the muscle is here, the skin is here. What we’re doing is we’re taking something that was originally 2 inches thick or whatever, 1.5 thick, and we’re just letting it squash down into something flat as a pancake. The scar tissue has taken place and pulling that skin back down to the muscle. So, we’re pulling that skin close to the muscle. So, one thing we’re doing, we’re exposing the muscles that are really there. And we also, if we over thin and we take this and thin the area in between, you know, if we thin that more than the area of the muscle, now we’re enhancing the look of the six-pack.

If you have muscles, it makes the muscles you have to show. If you don’t have any muscles, it gives you the look of muscles. So, that’s kind of what we’re doing with that liposuction. After the surgery, you got to wear a garment, you know, like the bicycle suit to compress that wet sponge. You got to do massage to compress that wet sponge, all kinds of things. So, everything we can do, the more we can compress the sponge, the faster it will stick, the faster it heels, and the better the swelling is. So, that’s kind of the idea of, you know, mechanically what we’re doing.

Now, so far as the recovery, first day, the liposuction hurts like sting. I mean it’s like, “Why did I do it?” kind of pain. And the truth is men can’t take pain. The women do better than the men with the liposuction. So, the first day is not that fun. Okay? Second day is better. Third day’s a lot better. Usually, pain down by like 50% by the third day. First massage is not that fun either. Burning, achy, throbby kind of pain. You know, after the first one into the second week, the massage is more like exercise. You know, I kind of try to teach you ways to do self-massage using bodyweight and things like that. And then I think the massage is kind of a more the better kind of thing. Now, no exercise for two weeks after the surgery. If you do too much too soon, you get more swelling. If you go out and go to the gym the second day after surgery, you swell up like a balloon. So, two weeks, you start light exercise and then it’s trial and error. You do exercise, you get more swelling, too much, you can’t do it. Wait, try it again later. You do exercise, no extra swelling you keep on doing it.

Now, the garment, you’ve got to wear 24 hours a day for a month and then after that month is trial and error. You take the garment off, you don’t have additional swelling, the garment’s off. Take it off, you get more swelling, put the garment back on till the swelling goes down. It will really take three to four months before you get the final look. You’ll see a change in the next day, 1 month, 50% of swelling gone, 2 months, 75%, three months, 90%. Everybody has a cleaner look at three months than one month. It just takes that much time for all the swelling to go away.

Most people are back to work, you know in a week, five to seven days, maybe nine days back to work and things like that. But you are like at a week you are not full strength. You’re maybe like 80% strength. Maybe 2 weeks to 3 weeks, you got like 100% strength and things like that. The key to getting the strength back is drinking and eating because this liposuction makes you dehydrated and it makes you weak. So now, you’re in like a building phase. Your metabolism is jacked up. You need all that energy to heal. So you gotta eat, you gotta drink. You’re eating like an athlete afterwards. You’re eating like, you know, you’re bodybuilding, you’re training, you’re trying to build up. You’re in a buildup phase.

Now, complications. This surgery, you know, it can be done in a local. I do all the surgery under general anesthesia. I think the advantage of general anesthesia is airway control. When you have general anesthesia, you have a tube in the throat. If something happens, if there’s a problem, you can breathe for the person. You’re doing it a local, a problem, there’s not a lot you can do. So, I am trained as a plastic surgeon. I do all my surgery under general anesthesia. Blood clot, whenever you have an anesthesia, whenever you have surgery, you’re at risk for blood clot. When you’re asleep, the legs don’t move, blisters on the leg and clots. If you have clots in the leg, it’s called a deep vein thrombosis. Clot raised from leg and goes along, that’s called a pulmonary embolism. Moving and drinking prevent clots. To set up for a clot, you’re dehydrated and you don’t move. The person that drinks and move and get up out of the bed right after surgery and moving, can exercise the legs, every time the calf muscle contracts, the blood flows, that’s how you prevent a blood clot.

Now, infection can happen within the operation, but it’s rare with liposuction. I’ve seen 2 infections with liposuction in 19 years. The first one I saw was in 1988 and then I’ve seen one more since then. So, it can happen, but it’s not that common. You do lose blood with liposuction. Whenever you do liposuction, you know, when you’re taking out those fat cells, you lose blood. Your blood count, your hematocrit, you know, will go down by three points when you do liposuction, things like that. Other things are complications of anesthesia. You know, you can have throat spasm after anesthesia, laryngeal spasm. You could have pneumonia after anesthesia. You could have lung collapse, [inaudible 00:07:49] after anesthesia. If you’ve never had anesthesia before, one in a million people have allergy to anesthesia. I think these are the complications and things you have to think about, you know, when you’re going to do a liposuction.

So, we’re kind of going over things and now we’ll just look at some photographs, and try to go over that, and show you what we did. So, this is a before, and this is an after. So, this is a guy that exercises, you know, and got muscle, but there’s a cover over the muscle and he can’t see him. He doesn’t like this little pooch. He doesn’t like the love handles. So, what we did was liposuction the abdomen, the flank, and then the flank on all the way around the back. So, you can see a little area of extra pooch here, you can see the love handle extended back to tire. So, when we do the liposuction, we over liposuction the area in the middle, and then we follow right where his muscles are to highlight his muscles.

So, now you can just see, just a cleaner look, a more competition-ready, kind of look. And you can see how we’ve got a straight line here and then a bump and then a straight line. Now, we got more straight lines. And you can just see all the muscles just showing. He just looks clean and you can see the little tire is kind of gone afterwards. So, that’s the idea of what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to thin this exactly. So, we’ll make this part a little thinner. This part a little thinner. This part a little thicker. So, that’s how we’re making the muscles stand out. And if you put him where his muscles are, it looks natural. If you put this someplace where the muscle isn’t, it looks kind of strange.

Now, this is another liposuction. And the point of this picture is not everybody has to have a tummy tuck. Tummy tucks are all well and good, but you’d have a bad scar, and it doesn’t give the shape, and it doesn’t make the skin contract. Because if you look at him, he’s got a skin envelope like this wide and a body like this wide. Unless you get the skin to come down to the body, it’s not gonna look so great whether you cut some off the bottom or not. It’s really getting those two diameters of the skin to match. And the liposuction, if you do it right, will make the skin contract. So, you can see how much tighter this skin is than that. You can see how much tighter the stomach is than that. So, you know, it doesn’t always have to be tummy tucks.

So, we did a liposuction here at the chest, you can see the chest is just a little flatter, the abdomen and then all the back. You can see that tire here. You can see that tire here. So, we got the straight line and then we got that out, you know, this little bubble and things. Now, we got more of a straight line on the back and you can see how the stomach is just flat. And so, skin will contract if you do the liposuction right. You don’t do it right, it won’t contract, but it can be done. So, you don’t always have to have a big old cut, you know, a big scar all the way across your abdomen. I would take, you know, this look over the cut any day.

And here’s another look. You know, not really a lot of muscles. Got a little bit extra in the chest, a little gynecomastia you can see here, but we did liposuction on the chest, abdomen, flank, and then highlight the muscles. Now, this doesn’t really look like a guy that’s exercising. This looks like a guy that’s clean and exercising. And you can see the chest. It shrinks. The skin shrinking is the key. Again, you see the little tire, the little pooch, it’s gone. Now, you’re seeing the oblique muscles showing. Now, where we highlighted his muscles and you can see that’s where his muscles really are. We’re not trying to make them something they’re not. We’re trying to make them keep them what they are. But this is just the clean look. It looks good. And you can see again, you go down the back, straight line, and a pooch, a round thing. Now, we got our back and then a straight line. We’re not trying to make a small waist. We’re not trying to feminize. We’re trying to make him masculine. Let him come in at the waist and things.

Now, this is a gentleman who had liposuction and a six-pack done by somebody else, he wasn’t happy with it. A little asymmetric. Well, this part is bigger than that. Chest is just a little defined. You don’t really see the muscle standing out too much. You can just see a little bit too round in the hips, you know, too feminizing. We want a more muscular, a more muscular look. So, we did liposuction in the chest, abdomen, the flank, and then the outer side of the hips to make it more straight and flat, a more muscular look. You just see the six-pack coming in more. He just looks more defined and clean. You know, we did a little extra liposuction in here. Well, here, you can see a line conducting the pec and the lat. You don’t really see a separation. Now, we’re seeing more, like more lat, more pec. He just looks more muscular. You can see the six-pack kicking in.

Again, you can see he’s had this liposuction before, but still a little loose here, still out a little bit. Now, we got him a little flatter, a little straighter and things like that. Now, the person who did the liposuction before, he puts holes on the side to do the six-pack, which I don’t think is good. I don’t like those scars. For me, I’m putting the holes in the navel to do all the six-pack. We’re using curved cannulas and just coring out like this so we’re not putting any extra scars. But those scars were there so there was nothing we could do about it, but I don’t like the extra scars to do this. You know, we want to hide as many scars as we can.

Now, this is a gentleman that really doesn’t have a real six-pack, but we’re just giving him a look, you know. The first one had muscles and we’re showing the muscles there. This one, not really there, but we’re giving the look. And you can kind of see the chest, he got a little gynecomastia, so we did liposuction in the chest, abdomen, flank. And you just see we flattened the stomach. You know, we add the little highlights where his muscles really are. If he starts exercising, they’re going to come out there because we marked exactly where his muscles were. And then, you know, it’s going to be a natural look. You see we got the stomach flatter and then you can see the straight line and the out. You know, that little convex. Now, you see we got this more straight, a straight line and then more straight. This guy’s just more muscular than this one.

Here’s the guy, you know, like super shape, in really good shape. He just wanted more definition in the muscles and he didn’t like the little tire here. Don’t like the love handles, don’t like the tire, doesn’t like this, you know? Doesn’t like this and wants to be cleaner. So, we did liposuction on the abdomen and flank. And now, the muscles are just standing out more. He just looks even like more cut, more muscular. You can see we got rid of that little tire. You can see how again it goes down and then the loose skin and the outer bulging and now we got him more flat. He looked good before. He just looks better after. Again, we’re putting the holes in the navel. We’re not putting any holes here and things like that to do the six-pack. You know, if the scars are there, they kind of show things.

Now, this guy is a little heavier, you know? You can see the pec’s a little heavy. You can see a little extra in here. So, we did liposuction of the pec, abdomen, flanks, and then the area between the pec, you know, in this area between the pec and the lat, so we get definition. We don’t want to see just one line connecting the thing. We want to see the back of the pec and the front of the lat, so it’d look cleaner. So, this just looks cleaner. There’s no real muscle look, now there’s a muscle look. You can see here that fat just connecting to pec in the lat. Now, we got the front of the lat, the back of the pec. It’s more separate. He just looks clean. You can just see that bulge and the tire. The tire is gone. You can see again that bulge coming out. We got him more straight on the back. That’s just a nice muscular look, you know. That’s just a nice muscular look.

What we’re doing with the male liposuction is we’re working on those problem areas. Those problem areas are genetic. That tire is there genetically. You know, you genetically have more fat cells there, so it’s going to be the first place to gain weight and the last place you lose weight. Everything else might be cut, you still got a tire. The answer to this is liposuction because you’re decreasing the concentration that what the genes say, where the fats supposed to be, you’re changing it. And if you get it even and smooth, it’s changed forever. When you thin things, the muscles that are there show. When you do the extra action over liposuction, now, we enhance what’s really there. So, the answer for the male with the love handles, which we all kind of deal with and the lack of the six-pack is the liposuction. The good thing about liposuction is it’s permanent because fat cells don’t replicate. Once you change the concentration, they’re changed forever.

So, this is our video on male liposuction. We’re going to try to just keep doing more and more videos because I think that, you know when you explain things, I think people can understand, can protect themselves, and can get the things they really want. And I will see you next time with trying to give you some more useful information. Have a good day.


What is Recovery Like?

During your consultation, Dr. Perry will inform you of the risks and possible side effects associated with a male breast reduction. Your chest area will be bandaged at the incision sites, and a compression garment may be issued to you to decrease swelling and support your new chest contours. You will also be informed of any necessary aftercare of your incision sites.

Any pain or discomfort experienced after surgery is generally controlled with prescribed medications. Some swelling is also normal but should subside as you heal. After all swelling has gone down, the full results of your new chest should be visible and long-lasting; however, you may need to commit to a regimen of proper diet and exercise in order to maintain results.

Contact Dr. Wendell Perry today to schedule your consultation and improve not only your body, but also your confidence.


FAQ

Frequently
Asked Questions

Can gynecomastia come back after the surgery?
In the majority of patients, male breast reduction surgery yields long-term results. However, gynecomastia can recur if there is weight gain, drug use, hormone fluctuations, or other issues. Dr. Perry can help you make a plan to help make your results permanent.
Is there scarring after male breast reduction?
For most gynecomastia procedures, there is very minimal scarring.
How long is the recovery after male breast reduction?
Recovery will vary from patient to patient. Most patients return to work and social events in about a week. Light exercise can be continued about two weeks after the surgery. Normal, strenuous workouts can begin about four to six weeks after surgery.