Hi, so I've heard all about how binding can effect your skin's "elasticity". By this do they mean stretch marks? I have some pretty big ones on my chest, even before binding, and I'm wondering if this will make for bad surgery results? Thanks

I don't have any experience with surgery yet, but binding has definitely created stretchmarks where I never had them before. Not just on the skin of the breast, but even going out around my ribs just under my armpits.

I have major stretchmarks and they didn't have any negative effect on my top surgery results. In fact, the stretchmarks on my chest look better now than they did before top surgery, because the skin was relatively loose before but my surgeon tightened up the area to make it nice & flat.

The elasticity on my chest was awful but I ended up with better results than I thought I would, most of the really bad stretched out skin got removed and the rest pulled tight. I have some stretchmarks at the top of my chest still and they are red now rather than the silvery white kind, I guess from all the pulling, I suspect they will go back white in time.

I had stretch marks from 20 years of binding.  The stretch marks that were present at the top of the breasts are still there because that part of the skin wasn't removed, it was just pulled down to attach to the skin that was left after the breast was taken off.  Therefore, yes there are some stretch marks about an inch above the incision line.  It is the left over skin from the top portion of each breast.  I hope this makes sense.

In terms of the operation itself and how well your chest will come out (the shape), no, stretch marks don't matter.

Thanks for asking that because I've been wondering the same thing.

I've also wondered about this. I'm lucky enough to have had an extremely small chest even before T, but three months on T and I can almost wear a shirt without binding. Binding make me feel better so I continue to do it, but I was also wondering what the effects of binding on a small chest and then having surgery were. I'm shooting for surgery in a year hopefully. I'll probably keep binding until then, unless by some miracle they get small enough on T I don't have to. I'm not counting on that though.

Quote from: TrojanMan on June 09, 2014, 09:55:43 PM
Hi, so I've heard all about how binding can effect your skin's "elasticity". By this do they mean stretch marks? I have some pretty big ones on my chest, even before binding, and I'm wondering if this will make for bad surgery results? Thanks

I had some stretch marks on my chest before my top surgery and it did have a short-term effect on the results. However, now after almost 2 years those effects have disappeared except for one area that is also on its way to disappearing completely too.

Depending on where the stretch marks are and how they sit on your chest, they can cause the skin along the incision line to "fold" somewhat (was also informed about this by my surgeon). I had this in small spots along the incision line towards the end of the incision in the middle of my chest. Those (except for the one remaining spot) have now smoothed out as my scars smoothed and flattened over time. So in the short-term you may find this as a "negative effect" on your results should it happen to you, but at least in my experience it goes away before the 2nd year post-op (again, only my experience) and isn't a long-term thing.

I do have some stretch marks higher up on my chest that didn't touch the incision line. Those whitish lines like I had pre-op, but those have slowly started to fade as well. They're nowhere near what they were before, so hopefully they'll continue to fade and disappear completely.

I like my stretch marks. They are silvery and they have an interesting texture that is pleasant to touch.

Regarding top surgery with them, I feel like I've heard more happy stories than negative ones. No matter what surgery is aimed at, the doctor usually tries his or her best to make the end result look nice, and they get to choose where to cut and how to angle your stitches.