Male Breast Reduction on One Breast
Gynecomastia patient has one breast larger than the other
Occasionally, a patient comes into my office with one breast larger than the other and, to appear normal, wants gynecomastia surgery on just that one breast.
It’s a condition known in medicine as unilateral (meaning, one side only) gynecomastia which requires a unilateral mastectomy.
First, we make sure nothing else is happening — like a tumor.
But here’s the fly in the ointment: it is very difficult to operate on one breast and make it identical to the other. About the only way to accomplish the task is to perform surgery on both.
Otherwise, the outcome can be one breast that looks normal (the operated breast) but now the untouched breast may look odd — or even bigger in comparison. And usually some excess tissue on the other breast also exists, but obviously not as much as the larger side.
So, most plastic surgeons want to perform surgery on both sides as well.
I usually recommend that both sides be done to provide the best and most optimal results possible.
While virtually all gynecomastia patients report being unhappy with their large, female-like breasts, having one breast that is far larger than the other only makes the problem worse.
Some body builders are extremely frustrated when they devote endless hours to weight lifting and then discover the large chest muscles they have developed only make the breast fat and tissue – known as “bitch tits” to them — stick out farther.
The one larger breast problem also occurs in teens and non-bodybuilding men.
Overall, you may be wondering how many men have – or will develop – any form of gynecomastia. If you look at the articles that have been written about the topic, it often depends on who counts.
Four M.D.s writing in a 1961 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that 65 percent of boys may have the problem but that it “typically resolves on its own.” (Also, typically, many do not!)
A military doctor, counting Navy patients on active duty in 1944 found eight percent had enlarged male breasts, or “man boobs.”
Other researchers, counting hospitalized men and those in pathology labs, found about 40 percent have the condition with almost 60 percent of men over 70 having it.
One of the statistics I like the best is by Merl Yost, a psychoanalyst, gynecomastia patient, author of a book on gynecomastia and operator of the excellent website, Gynecomastia.org.
Yost wrote in a 2006 article for Men’s Health that about 91 percent of gynecomastia surgery patients were happy and would recommend the procedure to a friend.
All of which brings us to our next post: of the nine percent who were not happy, some had revision gynecomastia surgery.
Same patient as above after gynecomastia surgery