Many of my patients come to me through bodybuilding circles, some who developed gyncomastia during puberty, many who have developed the condition from steroid or pro-hormone use. It's important to be aware of the factors that cause the condition before you have the surgery, since if you are using a product that might impact your condition, and you continue to use it after the surgery, it may come back. Many bodybuilding supplements are completely safe and don't have an effect on the tissue in the chest. Some products, however, may contain hormonally active ingredients, even though the product is not marketed as such, either due to contaminants from the production process or inclusion of a "proprietary blend" of ingredients--which could mean just about anything. Similarly, black market steroids are not always the "low risk" product that you think you bought, but rather some other steroid with unexpected side effects.
If you have used any sort of hormonal supplementation, it's likely that liposuction alone will not correct your gynecomastia adequately, so be skeptical of any surgeon who suggests that that will certainly be enough. Even if steroids or pro-hormones weren't involved, you still want your surgeon to plan a comprehensive procedure which will address all elements of the gynecomastia, not just the fat.
Regarding insurance coverage, at least in Massachusetts, Blue Cross has very specific criteria for male breast reduction, including many of the same criteria that qualify women for breast reduction. This includes a volume requirement that the majority of my patients would never meet--In other words, the volume of tissue that must be removed to satisfy the criteria is such a large amount that most patients wouldn't meet it. Also, a significant problem with using insurance is that you need to get prior authorization, and some insurance plans won't give the authorization on some procedures such as gynecomastia. They will only decide afterwards if the procedure will be covered or not. In fact, even if insurance does give prior authorization, they may still deny payment, and you are stuck with the bill that you didn't expect to get! You may be better off planning to pay for the procedure, and then afterwards submitting to see if you can get anything back. Surprisingly, I recently had a patient who was denied authorization pre-operatively, but did get partial coverage when he submitted the paperwork afterwards.
Because the surgery is cosmetic in nature, you'll likely be required to pay up front. Some offices can provide financing in the office, or through cosmetic surgery finance companies. We work with Care Credit in our office, and there are other similar options available for short-term cosmetic surgery loans.
Many other questions that you might have are answered in the FAQ on my site:
http://www.ricksilverman.com/gyno-faq.htmlThere is also information about working out after surgery, which I provide to my patients, but you should be sure to speak wtih your surgeon about specifics, since he or she may approach this topic differently.
http://www.ricksilverman.com/getting-back-to-training.htmlGood luck.
Rick Silverman
Topic: couple questions (Read 3455 times)
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