Gynecomastia Revision Surgery

Q: Dr. Eppley, First of all,  I want to thank you for the time that you took and will take to analyze my case,  I’ll be eternally grateful for any help that you can provide to me in order to improve my condition.I have been really traumatized over the years for this mistake on a surgery that  was made to me when I was 17 years old (I’m 39 years old now) Please see photos attached,  I’ll be waiting anxiously your answer.

A: Thank you for sending your pictures. You have a very classic gynecomastia ‘crater’ deformity from over resection of the breast tissue. This has left no intervening tissue between the nipples and the pectoralis muscle fascia, thus allowing the nipple to contract inward and scar down. Its appearance may have gotten a little worse as you have aged because the chest tissue around it (fat) may have gotten bigger allowing the inward nipple retraction look worse.

The correction of nipple retraction after gynecomastia reduction depends on the degree of severity and requires tissue grafting for release and improvement. Your case is fairly severe and you would ideally need an open release and dermal-fat grafts to level out the nipple contours. Dermal-fat grafts do require a harvest site somewhere which is usually done in the lower abdomen. Injectable fat grafting could also be done but that would definitely require multiple treatments to get the best result. There may also be a role for liposuction of the chest around the nipples to help optimize the chest contour also.

Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana