Breast implants come in a variety of shapes, surface textures, and sizes. Depending on the desired shape you wish to achieve, the plastic surgeon may choose a round or contoured breast implant shape. The patient chooses between round breast implants and teardrop or "anatomical" implants. Anatomical breast implants are shaped like a teardrop in order to give the breasts a natural flow and bounce. Anatomical implants allow the breast to have a gentle slope until it reaches its maximal projection or fullness towards the bottom of the breast. Anatomical, or teardrop, breast implants typically have a textured shell and they do not accidentally rotate after breast augmentation. Rotation of a teardrop breast implant may still occur after breast augmentation surgery, which leads to breast unevenness or asymmetry while distorting the shape of the breast. Round breast implants appear perfectly circular when placed on a table. When held upright, however, they assume a teardrop shape as gravity pulls the majority of the gel filling downwards. Textured anatomical breast implants are fixed and do not change shape as the body changes position. Therefore, even if a patient lies flat, round implants move, but teardrop implants stay in the exact position. The surface of a breast implant can be smooth or textured. The surface of a smooth implant is as smooth as the surface of a balloon. The surface of a textured breast implant feels somewhat like sandpaper. Textured surface implants were originally thought to reduce the chance of capsular contracture. Some information in the literature with small numbers of patients suggests that surface texturing reduces the chance of severe capsular contracture, but clinical information from studies of a large number of women with breast implants shows no difference in the likelihood of developing capsular contracture. A smooth breast implant is able to move freely in the breast pocket. Smooth implants usually have thinner shells than textured implants, which makes them the softer choice of the two. Additional benefits of a smooth breast implant include implant longevity, lower patient cost, and reduced risk of rippling. A textured breast implant has a rough outer surface in order to create cohesion between the implant and the surrounding tissue. This helps the implant maintain proper vertical alignment, a particular concern with teardrop breast implant shapes. Textured breast implants have been associated with a higher rate of leaking and breast rippling than smooth implants; however, textured implants decrease the risk of displacement. There is actually a scientific method for selecting the best breast implant size based on the width of the breasts. Doctors do not want patients to have an implant that looks like a small marble under the breast. Nor does either party want implants that are so wide that they touch each other at the center of the chest or and extend too far to the underarms. A full breast measurement is imperative to assure the appropriate breast implant size. Of course, any patient can select an implant larger or smaller than the suggested sized based on breast measurements, but then the patient is risking looking unnatural.

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Personalized Medicine

Personalized medicine is a medical model emphasizing the systematic use of information about an individual patient to select or optimize that patient's preventative and therapeutic care. Personalized medicine is the products and services that leverage the science of genomics and proteomics and capitalize on the trends toward wellness and consumerism to enable tailored approaches to prevention and care. Over the past century, medical care has centered on standards of care based on epidemiological studies of large cohorts. Personalized medicine seeks to provide an objective basis for consideration of such individual differences. Traditionally, personalized medicine has been limited to the consideration of a patient's family history, social circumstances, environment, and behaviors in tailoring individual care. Personalized medicine uses new methods of molecular analysis to manage a patient’s disease or predisposition toward a disease. It aims to achieve optimal medical outcomes by helping physicians and patients choose the disease management approaches likely to work best in the context of a patient’s genetic and environmental profile. Such approaches may include genetic screening programs that more precisely diagnose diseases and their sub-types, or help physicians select the type and dose of medication best suited to a certain group of patients. Personalized medicine is an extension of traditional approaches to understanding and treating illness. Since the beginning of the study of medicine, physicians have employed evidence found through observation to make a diagnosis or to prescribe treatment. In the modern concept of personalized medicine, the tools provided to the physician are more precise, probing not just the obvious, such as a tumor on a mammogram or cells under a microscope, but the very molecular makeup of each patient. Looking at the patient on this level helps the physician get a profile of the patient’s genetic distinction, or mapping. By investigating this genetic mapping, medical professionals are then able to profile patients, and use the found information to plan a course of treatment that is much more in step with the way their body works. Genomic medicine and personalized medicine use genetic information to prevent or treat disease in adults or their children. Having a genetic map or a profile of a patient’s genetic variation can then guide the selection of drugs or treatment processes. This can minimize side effects or to create a strategy for a more successful outcome from the medical treatment. Helping the physician cover all the bases is imperative. Genetic mapping can also indicate the propensity to contract certain diseases before the patient actually shows recognizable symptoms, allowing the physician and patient to put together a plan for observation and prevention. Personalized medicine, when coupled with personal pharmacogenetics, is a unique approach that may be well suited for the health challenges we face in the new millennium. Although the medical and scientific communities, through research and discovery, got the upper hand over many of the diseases we have encountered since the advent of advanced medicine, many diseases that are more complicated. Diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s are caused by a combination of genetic and other factors. Coupled with the fact that they tend to be chronic, they place a significant burden on not only the patient, but on the healthcare system as a whole. Personalized medicine aims to provide the tools and knowledge to fight chronic diseases and treat them more effectively than ever before. Genetic profiles can help physicians to better discern subgroups of patients with various forms of cancer, in addition to other complex diseases, helping to guide doctors with accurate forms of predictive medicine and preventative medicine. With personalized medicine, the physician is intending to select the best treatment protocol or even, in many cases, avoid passing the expense and risks of unnecessary medical treatments on to the patient altogether. In addition, personalized medicine, when used correctly, aims to guide tests that detect variation in the way individual patients metabolize various pharmaceuticals. Personalized medicine is working to help determine the right dose for a patient, helping to avoid hazards based on familial history, environmental influences, and genetic variation.