Usually the patient will go home the day after surgery. In my practice we’ll take the drains out the next day and the patient will be discharged home, and I expect the patient to be quite slowed down that week. I usually recommend a full week off, so a week to ten days, and that would be spending most of the time home, laying on the sofa, watching TV, reading magazines, but not really running around too much. What I want is the breast to sit gently, supported by the tapes and the dressings so that the implant settles in, you get no additional bruising or swelling and it allows everything to heal up nicely. We then usually see the patient at one week, which is to check the wounds and make sure they’re okay and that they have no issues. Some patients get bruising and swelling in the breast that occasionally requires intervention to deal with it and we like to see the patients at a week to make sure that that hasn’t happened. At one week I then put patients into a support bra, which they wear day and night for six weeks. No physical sport, no vigorous activity and they take it gently for those six weeks, but usually return to work, start driving a car at a week or two weeks. I then see patients at the six-week time point, when we stop wearing the support bra, they can then go into normal underwear, return to the gym, back to normal activities. I then always review patients at three months then six months and if all is well I usually discharge them at that point. Things can happen right through that whole time frame, so there are a range of issues that you can encounter, which is why we like to see patients to ensure all is well, because actually, you have to remember, the patient hasn’t done this before so it’s all new to them, whereas I do it every week, so they don’t know what’s normal and what’s not normal. And I think it’s important that you’re there for patients so that you can actually reassure them: “don’t worry that’s fine”, “that’s meant to look… ”, “ this is normal for now” or when there are things going wrong you pick it up quickly and you can deal with it.
