Has anyone had a breast enlargement on the nhs in the last few years

[nobreasts]

Hi I have no breasts
It's impacted my bf of my children
I am healthy on the lower end of BMI
Have no breasts
GP in agreement
Have had babies so not particuarly a sex dissorder
Genuinely no breasts

Very upset

Have asked for an enlargement with nhs but Gp said he's never encountered and unsure how to go further thru this with NHS

Any advice appreciated

I've no idea if you'll qualify under NHS op but I hope u do. I think it's quite dismissive for people to call it cosmetic surgery if as u say its caused u mental health issues and eating disorder. Best of luck.

The person who paid for their mastectomy WAS a woman.
I do think paying for cosmetic surgery should be private, though.

Sorry if I've misunderstood, did you say you weighed 5 stone last year?

If that is the case can I gently suggest there are other things going on in your relationship with your body and it can be really easy to see an external intervention (like surgery) as the answer or the cure to a more complex situation than surgery can fix.

I used to think implants would solve my body issues. I had no breast tissue as a teen and literally visited a surgeon on my 18th birthday.

First op I lost my nipple sensation (never came back infact I only have pain). But they kept hardening so by the time I was 27 I had had 5 further surgeries. I tried everything - normal implants, different shaped implants, saline implants.

The fact you have no breast tissue goes against you - you don’t have any fat to soften the shape of the implant.

Eventually in my 40s I had them out for good - all the surgeries meant I had lost more breast tissue (as they remove internal scarring during surgery) and I can feel gaps in my body where they use to be. And I only had very small implants 200ml each.

The two reasons I had them out for good was no one had told me when I had them in you need to replace them every 15 years. So I was thinking - and I really going to be having another op at 60? And by that time I had kids and for me the increased cancer risk is just not worth it. My kids would rather have me with no boobs than no me at all.

Fuck me, why are some of the comments so rude?

If OP is able to get it for free, why would she choose to pay?!?! To martyr her finances, so online randoms are happy?

There is nothing wrong with asking, and clearly, this is something she's seen the GP about, that is affecting her mental health to some degree and has meant that her breasts are not functioning as expected (breastfeeding)

Pay for it yourself. It isn’t a medical condition that causes issues other than you not liking it. Plenty of people aren’t happy with their bodies and live with it.

And while I agree with this sentiment the reality is quite different. As I had to sell my house a few years ago to pay for lipoedema liposuction on my arms and legs to keep me mobile and out of a wheelchair, I sincerely hope that the NHS is not giving out breast enlargements which genuinely are cosmetic and not related to mobility and becoming disabled if the surgery doesn't happen.

Sorry OP but you need to pay privately for your boobs 🙄

I know a woman with this condition and she had a boob job at 18 (paid for by her parents) because she literally didn't have any breast tissue. It was genetic I think because her grandmother had the same.

I don't disregard how much this could impact your confidence in your body.

That said, I am not surprised that boob jobs aren't regularly covered by the NHS. I don't think many people would be happy for their taxes to go towards these kinds of things when the NHS is on its knees.

I think some private surgeons can do payment plans which would make it more affordable. I also think you're right not to go abroad for it!

Not personal experience but a good friend of mine had this done on the NHS for the same medical condition as you when she was 16 (she's 31 now and had them replaced about 6 years ago). I think they used skin stretchers the first time from what I remember she told me, and they had to put the implants under the muscle to make them look natural. She was told that putting them under the muscle, although a bigger surgery, has a much better effect in terms of how they look because there's no natural breast tissue to stop them otherwise looking like "bolt ons". If you do manage to get the surgery I'd suggest looking into that, hers looks really natural (other than being perky enough that she never needs a bra lol)

You shouldn't have had to pay privately for that. Two wrongs don't make a right, no need to wish the OP the same fate!

I think some of you should be aware that poor body image has a massive effect on individual self image and can

So ...presumably you would tell all the people whose teeth stick out not to have NHS orthodontic care and get used to the name calling etc and receive poor life choices.

I have family experience of this issue (tuberous breasts) and the transformation is beyond the cost of the operation. From hiding away throughout her teens she has blossomed into a wonderful happy person. No the NHS didn't pay and it still makes me angry for her.

I wonder if the same applies for fertility treatment.

Yes, your trust offers free rounds of IVF but you should pay for it yourself anyway and stop being selfish? If you really wanted a child, you pay.

Not going to happen though, is it?

It's not OP's fault and she's perfectly right to ask. If it's not available then yes, she will have to pay. Simple as.

I've heard stories of it happening on mental health grounds but not recently. Good luck

I can’t go swimming because of my disability. No surgery or NHS options. There are limits, the NHS cannot many everything happen for everyone I’m afraid.

I have J cup boobs. I don’t go swimming. I couldn’t breastfeed either and had to exclusively express for my DC. The NHS didn’t even fix the botched vagina they left me with so there’s no point asking them to give me a breast reduction.

Please do your research on ‘breast implant illness’ and ALCL which is cancer. Also consider how you will feel about needing to replace them in 10-15 years, if you will have the funds to do so and so on.

Many women (including me!) are having them removed and if I could turn back time, I wouldn’t have had them. To add, I haven’t had any issues with them as such but even still, I live a healthy lifestyle and the risks that go with implants seem absolutely not worth it.

Do you have Poland's Syndrome? No breast tissue is medical. I have no breast tissue on my left side due to Poland's Syndrome and I have had several operations because it's a condition I was born with. I have had a tissue expander, two implants a mastopexy on my right side plus fat transfer into the affected left side. It's not cosmetic. No breast tissue at all is very different to breast enlargement. Some of the replies on this thread are vile.

This.

It's a lot of: it's shit for me, so it should be shit for you too going on.

I personally don't see the comparison of becoming disabled and wheelchair bound to having bigger boobs, but each to their own.

Please chase up on your referral with your GP. They sometimes get lost.

@nobreasts you need to look at the ICB policies not the hospital trust. I don't know where you live but here is the link to find them
https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/find-your-local-integrated-care-board/

If you can't see it covered under their guidance then I'd check NICE and see if they have guidance that covers your situation. Assuming one of these is positive, You can then ask the GP to refer you to the secondary care team who do breast augmentation/reconstruction

It’s always worth asking. I did about 30 years ago and it was a no.

I’d honestly be surprised considering at work it took over 2 months to get a printer cartridge 🤦🏻‍♀️ & I send all my drs letters electronically as much as possible but there’s always one practice determined to stay in the 1980’s.

As a woman with congenital symmastia as well as one significantly bigger, i understand completely how badly boob issues mess with your mental health. I'm in pain constantly too as theres no "in between" bit over my sternum for bras to sit, its just like folding a piece of paper, one crease down the centre if pushed together, so underwires are never sat where they're meant to, but i need padded cups to hide the assymetry. I'm disabled so not able to get any kind of loan etc for boobs as i dont have the income for it as cannot work, so i'm stuck with them, and absolutely they affect my relationship.
I really hope you are able to reach a solution that improves your confidence and mental health, be that NHS or privately.

I suspect it is almost impossible but I wanted to validate what you are going through and recognise that it must be causing you psychological pain.

Also, even if the NHS can’t or won’t fund it, does not mean it is not a medical condition. It means it is not cost effective compared to other medical conditions but it does not invalidate the fact it is medical.

If you are up for a fight, have a google of your local ICB (integrated care board, used to be known as CCG) and see if you could make an Individual Funding Request. It is probably not likely but sometimes it helps to know you’ve explored each and every option. 💐

My post wasn't really about that. It was about the dismissiveness of some of the responses I was reading — people replying to a poster who'd said that her breast development is so minimal that it's contributed to serious mental health problems, that the underdevelopment was severe enough even to affect her ability to feed her child, and asking about whether the NHS can provide a medical treatment that could help improve her overall health. Responses like

"The NHS wouldn’t give me a breast reduction despite my spine being damaged. What makes you think they’ll give you cosmetic surgery?"

and

"The NHS would not fund this, it's cosmetic. You will have to fund it yourself."

and

"Why do you think the NHS is going to give you cosmetic surgery?"

Short, snippy, dismissive posts, bundling up the whole complicated issue into a tidy little putdown.

I'm aware that fewer and fewer procedures which might conceivably be able to be characterised as "cosmetic" are being made available on the NHS. The stories on this thread from people who've been refused treatment they need are horrendous and infuriating. People left to either pay out themselves, or live with the physical and/or psychiatric consequences. "It's cosmetic" is so often a spurious justification, exploiting the fact that some people may choose to have that treatment for cosmetic reasons to get out of having to provide it to people with a clinical need.

I understand that the NHS is struggling but the answer isn't to just lie down and accept that the NHS in many cases won't help people who need, deserve, and are entitled to medical care, so long as they can find an excuse not to, like "it's cosmetic". People with genuine medical needs are essentially smeared as just vanity-driven freeloaders, and I can't believe so many people are buying into that bullshit. If the NHS is broken, we're not going to fix it by buying into lies about patients who've been failed.

(I have a minor experience with something similar. A few years ago, DP saw the GP about a dodgy growth on his eyelid. The GP said that it could be suspicious, but that this kind of lump is considered a cosmetic issue and therefore not the NHS's concern — "but it's affecting your vision now, yes?" <meaningful nod, gaze held> The thing was a small coloured lump that he could barely perceive, and only if he made the effort, and she knew damn well he could see fine. But the only way the GP could get him seen by the right people was to bend the truth. The NHS is so keen to offload as much as possible into the "not our problem" bin that it seems like alm"st anything that can be deemed potentially cosmetic will be. Turns out it was a skin cancer, which recently came back, so it's back to the ophthalmic surgeon and fingers crossed he doesn't lose too much eyelid. "Cosmetic" 🙄 Thank fuck for rule-bending GPs.)