Outpatient surgery in cosmetic surgery: the case of breast augmentation

At a time when outpatient surgery (or one-day hospitalization for a surgical procedure) is being presented as a solution to limit the social security deficit, the example of breast augmentation seems interesting to us. Cost has always been a major consideration in cosmetic surgery, as the patient pays all the costs associated with the surgical procedure.

As a result, cosmetic surgery was one of the first specialties to develop outpatient surgery, particularly for less painful procedures such as cosmetic eyelid surgery or a Cervico-Facial Lift.

Breast augmentation with silicone implants was reputed to be a very painful procedure and, 10 years ago, was virtually never performed on an outpatient basis. Patients even stayed in a hospital for 2 or 3 days to collect excess blood through the drains.

Several technical developments have made it possible to offer outpatient surgery in more than 70% of cases:

• improved anaesthetic techniques with the use of drugs that are rapidly eliminated from the body. As a result, the patient is fully awake and able to walk around less than an hour after the end of the operation.
• the use of a pre-operative nerve block or PEC-Block. Under ultrasound control, the anesthetist anesthetizes the nerve roots of the pectoral muscle, resulting in a marked reduction in pain for 20 hours after the procedure.
• improved pain management, with systematic use of local anesthetics and anti-inflammatories to reduce morphine doses and thus limit nausea and vomiting.
• step-by-step coagulation of blood vessels (previously, surgeons operated “by fingertip” without coagulating the vessels), thus avoiding post-operative bleeding and the need for Redon drains
• more frequent use of anatomical prostheses covered with polyurethane foam, enabling a more natural result even in front of the muscle. We place the prosthesis in front of the muscle in a subfascial plane in over 75% of our cases. Pain is very low, rated by our patients at less than 3 out of 10 in 80% of cases.

We believe that all these developments are of great benefit to patients, both in terms of quality of care and cost. We can now offer breast augmentation as an outpatient procedure for a fee starting at €6500. Find out more about the cost of breast augmentation with prostheses.