Anthony Youn, M.D., is a plastic surgeon in Metro DetroitI cringe every time I see a patient for a breast lift who is a smoker. I'm deathly afraid that despite my warnings, she will smoke before or after surgery and cause her nipples to turn black and fall off.
Yes. Smokers who undergo breast lifts are at great risk of losing their nipples.
I've seen it before.
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25 Answers
Thank God it only applies to women. I've smoked so long other parts of my anatomy should have fallen off a long time ago.
12 years ago. Rating: 11 | |
Didn`t know that but I do know if you unscrew your belly button your legs will fall off.
12 years ago. Rating: 9 | |
Hang on you are referring to belly buttons, sorry I thought, never mind.
Mine is a outty.
I have to say it, what a lot of crap.--- i know a few women who have had breast reconstruction which can be put in the same catorgry as breast enlargement and they are all smokers and i have never heard them mention nipples falling off.----- As the saying goes -- ' Only in America.'
12 years ago. Rating: 9 | |
Correlating smoking to nipples "falling off" is a stretch. In the situation you described (which is very rare) the reason a nipple may "die" is due to the very small arteries that bring oxygen to the nipples could be damaged during surgery especially if the nipple was partially or fully removed and re-attached. Or the arteries farther away from the nipple were sliced and then re-attached. When this occurs if the arteries (and veins) aren't re-attached well then the nipple would not get enough oxygen- loss of too much oxygen eventually leads to tissue death. Smoking can increase the hardening of arteries and less oxygen in the blood can occur. So, if a smoker has less oxygen flowing through their nipple arteries, nipple arteries that have hardened, and the surgeon has not done a good job re-attaching the arteries...well, the nipples would die. That's a lot of ifs to create the senario...and my apologies, if this doc. is seeing this "often" he needs to learn a different procedure to re-attach (called re-astamosis -sp?) the tissue, arteries and veins. I am in the medical profession and have never heard of "nipple" death post surgery. However, the above is the most probable reason it would occur in a smoker. Buyer beware- if the re-attachment is bad it would damage or cause death to a non-smokers"s nipple too.
12 years ago. Rating: 3 | |