A Step-By-Step Guide to Areola Restoration
In women who have had mastectomy and breast reconstruction, the nipple and areola are often a source of dissatisfaction. However, the areola’s color, shape, diameter, and position can help a woman feel complete with her breasts and body.
Restoring the areola is a crucial step in building a natural-looking breast mound. It can also boost a patient’s self-esteem.
Preparation
After the breasts have healed from mastectomy and reconstruction, your plastic surgeon may reconstruct a new nipple and areola. It uses a star-shaped incision to form the new nipple and tattooing to shade the new areola.
Your nipple and areola can be restored with skin from your breast or a substitute made from a piece of healthy skin removed from another area of your body. Depending on the type of surgery performed, your areola can also be restored with medical tattooing or areolar micropigmentation.
Areola restoration in Parker CO, with areolar pigmentation, is a top-rated service among women who have undergone breast cancer surgery or other forms of breast reconstruction. It is a way to create an areola with a more natural shape and to protrude the nipple if one is missing.
Surgery
Areola restoration, also known as nipple tattooing, is an option for women with one or both nipples removed during breast surgery. It can help to bring the final touch to a woman’s breast reconstruction journey and often provides a sense of completion and fulfillment for these patients.
During this procedure, surgeons use skin from another body part (usually your inner thigh or waist) to recreate a nipple and areola. The grafted skin naturally tends to heal darker than your own, giving the new nipple a more realistic appearance.
Ideally, areola reconstruction matches the size, shape, texture, color, and projection of your new nipple to that of your natural nipple. However, some women are less than happy with the final look of their reconstructed nipple and may opt to have it rebuilt or tattooed to achieve a more accurate result.
Recovery
After breast reconstruction, many women find their areola too small or does not look like a natural part of their body. In addition, they may emotionally connect to the areola and wish to restore it.
In these cases, we can use advanced tattooing techniques to create a perfectly symmetrical and naturally colored areola. This treatment can be performed as a standalone procedure or combined with nipple reconstruction and can help to improve the final appearance of the breasts after surgery.
The recovery period for areola restoration is relatively fast, and the results are permanent. Most women can return to work and social activities within a week. However, swelling and numbness are joint and may take a few weeks to subside entirely.
Post-operative care
Once you’ve gone through mastectomy surgery, you may want to make your nipple and areola look more like your natural breast. Depending on your preference, this can be done through surgery, cosmetic, cosmetic tattooing, or both.
If you choose surgery, the surgeon takes skin from another part of your body (for example, the crease of your inner thigh or the edge of your mastectomy scar) to graft onto your new nipple. It is known as a nipple-areola graft reconstruction.
The areola is a circle of darker skin around the nipple. It is also a natural part of the breast but can be removed during surgery to make room for other features.
Areola reconstruction can be performed as an outpatient procedure in the operating room or our office. This option can be helpful for women who have a single-breast mastectomy and are concerned about their scarring at the areola or women with bilateral breast reconstruction who want to achieve a more symmetrical appearance of the areola.
A Step-By-Step Guide to Areola Restoration
