Breast Augmentation in Turkey
Breast augmentation places an implant behind the breast to increase volume and change shape. It takes about an hour and a half under general anaesthetic, and it is the most commonly performed aesthetic operation in the world.
That is the short answer, and it is probably not why you are here. You are here because you have decided you want this done, you are considering having it done in Turkey, and you want to know who would be doing it and how.
Before the operation: is augmentation the right answer?
Most women arrive having already chosen the procedure. Sometimes that is correct. Often it is not, and the consultation exists to find out which.
An implant adds volume. It does not lift. If your concern is that your breasts have dropped after pregnancy or weight loss, an implant alone will usually make a heavier version of the same shape — and you will be disappointed for reasons you could not have anticipated. What you may need is an uplift, or an uplift with an implant.
If your two breasts differ noticeably in size or shape, the operation is not one operation performed twice. It is an asymmetry correction, planned differently on each side.
I would rather have this conversation before you book a flight than after.
How the implant is positioned
The implant can sit above the chest muscle, entirely beneath it, or in a dual plane — partially under the muscle at the upper pole, partially under the breast tissue at the lower pole.
I use dual plane in most of my breast augmentations. It gives muscle coverage where the implant edge would otherwise be visible or palpable — the upper and inner part of the breast — while allowing the breast tissue at the bottom to redrape over the implant rather than sitting on top of it.
“Most” is not “always”. A woman with generous breast tissue may need no muscle coverage at all. A very thin woman with little soft tissue may need more. The plane is chosen from your anatomy, not from my habit.
Choosing the implant
Size
Size is not chosen from a cup letter. Cup sizing is not standardised between manufacturers and tells me nothing I can operate from.
What determines size is the width of your chest at the breast base, the quality and thickness of your tissue, and how much your skin can accommodate without being stretched into a result that ages badly. An implant wider than your natural breast base does not look bigger. It looks obviously artificial, and over years it causes problems at the edges.
Shape and profile
Round or anatomical, and within each, a range of projections for the same base width. Higher projection gives more forward volume; lower projection gives a flatter, wider result. This is the single most useful thing to discuss with photographs in the consultation, because the same volume in millilitres looks very different in different profiles.
The gel
Modern implants are filled with cohesive silicone gel, which holds its shape rather than behaving like a liquid. The cohesivity is one of the reasons I use the implant I use — the consistency is close to breast tissue on palpation.
The surface
An implant shell can be smooth, micro-textured or macro-textured. The categories are defined by roughness: under 10 micrometres is smooth, 10 to 50 is micro-textured, above 50 is macro-textured.
I use micro-textured implants, and I will tell you plainly why I do not use smooth ones.
A completely smooth implant slides. It moves inside the pocket, and over time it can shift out of position. Smooth surfaces also provoke very little capsule formation — and some capsule is not the enemy. A thin, healthy capsule is what holds the implant where it was placed. Without it you get movement and recurring fluid collections.
Micro-texturing gives just enough adherence to prevent that, without the aggressive roughness of macro-textured implants — the surfaces that caused the real problem, and which I explain under Risks below.
The brand
I currently use Arion implants, for the gel consistency and the shell characteristics.
If you have researched this and you want a different manufacturer — Mentor, for example — I will use it. I am not tied to a supplier, and I would rather you had the implant you are comfortable with than the one I happen to prefer.
That sentence is here for a specific reason. One of the most common and most reasonable suspicions about surgery abroad is that the clinic uses whichever implant it obtained most cheaply, and that the patient never finds out. You will be told the manufacturer, the model, the volume and the serial numbers, and you will leave with the documentation.
That choice covers the manufacturer, not the surface. For the reasons above I use micro-textured implants, and if you wanted a smooth one I would want to talk it through rather than simply agree.
Where the incision goes
Under the breast, in the fold — but which fold matters.
Placing an implant lowers the inframammary fold. A scar cut along today’s crease can end up sitting above tomorrow’s: visible on the lower breast instead of hidden beneath it. So the incision is not placed where your fold is now. It is placed where the fold will be once the implant is in.
Where that line falls depends on the implant volume, your existing breast size, and the thickness and elasticity of your tissue. It is measured and marked for you before surgery, and it is one of the reasons the same operation leaves a hidden scar in one patient and an obvious one in another.
Periareolar and transaxillary approaches exist and have their indications.
Every suture is dissolvable. There are no stitches to remove, here or after you get home.
Will there be a drain?
A drain is a soft tube left inside the breast after surgery to draw off fluid. It stays in for several days, collects into a small bulb, and has to be measured, managed and eventually removed.
In roughly nine out of ten of my breast operations there is no drain.
That is not a technique and it is not something to advertise. It follows from a simple fact: in a breast that is dry at the end of the operation, a drain has nothing to do.
The decision is made during the operation
Not in the consultation, not the night before. It comes down to one question asked at the end of the procedure — am I satisfied with the bleeding control before I close?
In the large majority of cases the answer is yes and no drain is placed.
In a small number it is not so simple. A patient on blood thinners, a patient whose other conditions affect clotting, a breast where the tissue tells me something I would rather not leave to chance. In those cases I may place one. Even then it is not automatic — I decide on the table, with the breast open in front of me.
Why this matters more when you are travelling
A drain means a tube, a collection bulb, a daily output measurement, restricted movement and clothing that has to accommodate it. For a woman recovering in a hotel room and then boarding a flight home, that is a materially harder week.
It also means the drain has to come out before you leave, which pushes the whole timetable around.
The part worth saying plainly
A surgeon who never uses a drain under any circumstances is following a habit just as much as one who uses them routinely. Both have decided before looking. The drain was never the decision — the bleeding control is. Everything else follows from that.
Your six nights in Istanbul
You are operated on and you stay six nights afterwards. Your final examination is done in person, by me, the day before you fly.
Those nights are not padding. They cover the period in which the complications that matter actually appear — bleeding, infection, an early implant problem — and you spend that period in the same city as the surgeon who operated on you.
Clinics that discharge patients on day three are sending them home inside that window.
Recovery
Expect soreness and tightness for the first few days, most noticeably when you move your arms. Swelling makes the breasts sit high and firm at first; this settles over weeks, not days.
Desk work is usually possible within a week. Physical work, the gym, running and anything involving the chest or arms waits four weeks. The shape you see at six weeks is not the final one — implants settle over three to six months, and the twelve month result is the one that lasts.
Risks
Any site that does not have this section is selling to you.
Capsular contracture — the body forms a capsule around any implant. In a minority of women that capsule tightens, making the breast firm, higher and sometimes painful. It can occur years later and its treatment is surgical.
Changes in nipple sensation — usually temporary, occasionally permanent, in either direction.
Rippling — visible or palpable folds of the implant edge, more likely in women with thin tissue.
Asymmetry — no two breasts are identical before surgery and none are after.
Rupture — modern cohesive implants rarely fail dramatically, but they are not lifetime devices.
BIA-ALCL — a rare lymphoma of the immune system, not a breast cancer, which develops in the capsule around an implant. The association is with surface roughness. The most heavily textured implants carried the highest risk, and the roughest of them were recalled in 2019. There are no confirmed cases in women who have only ever had smooth implants. Micro-textured implants, which are what I use, sit between the two: the reported risk is far lower than for macro-textured devices, but the evidence is not strong enough for anyone to honestly tell you it is zero.
The usual first sign is swelling of one breast, and it typically appears years later — most commonly between eight and ten. Caught early it is treatable and usually curable, by removing the implant and the capsule around it. If one breast swells, at any point in your life, have it looked at.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the US Food and Drug Administration both publish current summaries of what is known.
Revision — a proportion of women will need further surgery at some point in their lives, for any of the above or because their preferences change.
Breast implant illness — a collection of systemic symptoms reported by some women with implants. The relationship to the implants themselves is not established. I mention it because you will read about it and because a surgeon who refuses to discuss it is not being straight with you.
Who I do not operate on
I turn patients away. Active smokers who will not stop before and after surgery. Patients whose expectations cannot be met by any operation. Patients whose anatomy means the result they are describing is not achievable. Patients who cannot stay long enough to be followed properly in the first week.
Saying no costs me a case. It costs you considerably more if I say yes.
After you fly home
You are followed for twelve months. Reviews at month one, three, six and twelve, and an open channel between them: aftercare when you return to the UK