Never Big Enough

Americans are some of the most superficial humans in the world. Everyone is caught up in having the greatest status, the most expensive things, and looking the best, and women have it the hardest. One of the most expensive and most popular items a female can spend on herself is an alteration of her body, her breasts. In America, three to four thousand dollars are spent on each breast reduction or implantation surgery. In a local office in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Dr. Mike Gonce has patients that spend $3,200 to $4,200 per breast augmentation. That adds up to about 14 surgeries in comparison to the cost of an out-of-state tuition at the University of Oklahoma! Although over $4,000 are spent on this specific surgery, breast implants are one of the most risky surgeries to have done.



Silicone gel filled breast implants



Before women should decide to go forth with breast implant surgery, they need to consider a few facts about things that could go wrong:

They can break

Breast hardness

Nipple numbness

Dying skin

Additional surgery

Back and chest pains

Implants can make it difficult to detect breast cancer

Other things that women need to know before they transform their body:

·         In November 2006, the FDA approved silicone gel breast implants for the first time for women age 22 or older only.

·         Four of ten reconstruction patients need extra surgery within 3 years of implantation.

·         In 2007, there was a decrease of breast surgeries by 12% due to the struggling economy.

·         Breast surgeries are the number one cosmetic surgeries performed in the U.S.

·         In 2009, over 289,000 breast augmentation procedures were performed in the U.S. with a little less than 1/3 of those surgeries were on patients from age 30-39.

For Dr. Gonce, cosmetic surgery is a way for him to provide individual time to his patients to make them feel better about themselves. Dr. Mike Gonce graduated from the University of Oklahoma and received his Cosmetic Surgery training from Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York. On his web page, Dr. Gonce mentions that he believes in honesty and a strong work ethic which allows him to excel in the cosmetic and plastic surgery industry. For more information, visit his website at http://www.gonce.com/html/about.php.

New York plastic surgeon Dr. George Lefkovits talks about the future of breast augmentation in the next 10, 50, and even 100 years. In Dr. Lefkovits opinion, within the next 10 years natural breast augmentation will use stem cells to improve reliability and some clinics are starting to currently use this method for surgeries. In the next 50 years, Dr. Lefkovits says that scientists will create a tissue mold that will give breasts a desireable size and shape so that women can custom-grow their breasts. As for the next 100 years, women will be able to control their breast growth by learning to turn them on and off at will with genetic triggers. Therefore, with all of these new technological practices, breast augmentation doesn’t seem to be going away for quite some time.

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia and Gonce.com