Anatomic asymmetric prostheses: shaping the breast

Over more than 50 years the manufacturers of mammary prostheses have offered implants of two basic shapes, sphere or teardrop, and always unilateral (symmetric). In the year 2001 Poly Implants Prothèse invited us to participate in the development of a device that, in our opinion, was going to change the conceptual design for mammary augmentation and reconstruction: the asymmetric anatomical prosthesis (AAP). On December 10, 2001 we performed, via the transareolaris inferior, the first breast augmentation using a prototype of anatomic, asymmetric, cohesive silicone implants. The result was pleasing in all aspects. The prostheses were capable to reproduce faithfully, in all dimensions, the anatomy of the female breasts, including the differences between each side. Since then, we have used the AAP with two different contents, silicone cohesive gel and Hidrogel, this last model in which we are currently experimenting. We utilized either a transareolar or submammary approach, according to the case (atrophy, ptosis, tuberous breast, etc.). We present in this paper the features of this new prosthesis, the procedures used for their implant, and a comparative analysis of our results.