Video Transcript

Kevin: Hi, my names Kevin. I’m 33 years old, born and raised in San Francisco California. I decided to come see Dr. Delgado based on a problem that I feel like, hold it in for for many, many years, which is gynecomastia.

David: My name is David Moore and I’m seeing the doctor today to talk about possibly having a treatment regarding my gynecomastia and my condition that is my chest.

Jerome: At the age of maybe eight or nine I  do remember I was flat-chested, and then something happened. Then my chest area perked up.

Meryl Yost: Gynecomastia is this condition where men or boys develop female-like breasts. It can be from a slight puffiness underneath the nipple to the extreme 48 Triple D and larger breasts. There are certainly many men who wear bras on a 24/7 basis as a consequence.

Meryl: Depending upon the degree of impact, how it’s handled by family, by teachers, by coaches, by peers will have a great deal of impact upon how this boy learns to deal with this or the interventions that have subsequently come, the hiding it with clothing, all the way through surgery.

Dr. Delgado: I would say my interested in gynecomastia first started probably seven or eight years ago when it was really before it became a real common thing or as popular as it is now. It’s is cosmetic surgery but it affects these people’s lives almost like a reconstructive procedure can change a person’s life.

Kevin: At first it was just chubby, or you know normal course of being a little overweight, and something that should ,you know, and it should go away.

David: Started when I was about twelve years old or so. Started with just one of my nipples being really hard and sore, you know, just that’s what it started. And I didn’t know what the hell was wrong. I was a little kid.

Kevin: Take off your shirt and you have friends kind of pointing and laughing and saying, you know, where’s your bra.

Jerome: It just didn’t look right, and then there were those who validated that it didn’t look right. So when I went to the navy the validation was “man you look like he have titties.”

David: It disgusts me. I think its disgusting and it makes me angry. It makes me angry that I look that way.

Jerome: So you learned to live around that situation, you learn to mask it as best you can. And so for me what I needed to do is wear tight shirts, what I needed to do was never go to the beach, what I needed to do was never go swimming.

Kevin: It’s depressing. Yah it is, it’s something that, you know, you wish that people… you wish that really it is all in your eyes and you could work on it internally. I’ve never had a long-term girlfriend and I would say the longest was about eight, nine months.

David: When I was a teenager I would, I would have done anything I could do to get rid of the way my my nipples looked. I mean I remember times I was even greeting knives and trying to, you know, cut myself you know just to try to see if I .. and I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I just wanted to be normal.

Dr. Delgado: Gynecomastia is a term that a lot of men don’t know about. They’re, they’re more hearing things like you know girls tits and bitch’s tits and you know all these terms that you hear about or slogans that are very embarrassing are what guys really know it by. But gynecomastia is the real term and it’s basically male breast enlargement.

Kevin: Hey doctor.

Dr. Delgado: Good to meet you. And you know obviously you’re here you know about your chest, can you just tell me a  little bit about that and what bothers you?

Kevin: Sure, I feel I’ve had a problem with the chest area that for many years from, I would say adolescence on, it was something that I felt that was kind of part of growing pains or being chubby or something. That it would go away with exercise and then after years and years  of just basically trying and seemed like my body develop I found out that it’s it seems to be here to stay. Over the years, you know, I’ve had the ,you know, oh, you know, “he’s got, you know, man boobs.” A few comments that it was enough for me to know that it’s easily noticeable and  it was something that I didn’t… I wanted to avoid hearing.

Dr. Delgado: How about your partner, is there an issue?

Kevin: I’ve never had long-term girlfriend. Some of it has to do, it was just me opening up enough and being intimate enough for a long  period of time with somebody. I would say some of that has to do with that, the self-consciousness I have of my body, and it’s prohibited me from, you know,  kind of really open it up and and settling down with with somebody. I definitely shop to find clothes that are not only looser in the chest area but have areas around it that may take the eyesight away from it, you know, big colors, you know, big shoulders if it’s suits, if it’s jackets.

Dr. Delgado, Jerome.

Jerome: Yes.

Dr. Delgado: I want to show you some pictures about, you know, what you can expect, you know. I’m gonna show you good outcomes, I’m gonna show you not as good at outcomes. I’m gonna show you, you know, problems that happen because the skin doesn’t contract. Here’s a guy too, nice contraction of the skin. He’s got larger areola, it’s shrunk down quite a bit. The incision you can hardly see, so it’s got, you know,  a very nice outcome. Younger man, so the contractions better. Now here’s a patient where the areola is stretched. It stretched out from the tissue behind it so it’s thin, so I know that’s not going to contract as well. And I tell guys because I’ve done enough, um, you’re going to have a problem with your skin not contracting right. You always have to look at what you start with and where you are. Liposuction from of the axilla from the back yes and if you don’t do that you end up getting this fullness out here because when you’re laying flat  on the bed the fatty tissue falls back and you can’t extract it well. All these guys have a certain amount of gland involved so you have to surgically remove that in my opinion to get a good outcome. You can see nice contour, nice and flat, you know, that you can see how full that is and you can see how flat that is and how how it’s nicely contracted.

You know, the point of what we’re doing here is to show men the reality of this and that there there are solutions to it that, you know, can be successful but there can be hurdles along the way.

Here’s a guy you can see he’s like a C cup here, you know, I know he’s going to have some skin issues I can look at him and… he looks good he’s got a fold here, a little folded tissue here, there’s none here. You know, he’s smaller on this side, less skin, on this side he has more skin so I’m not getting as much contraction so I can improve that.

Jerome: If the outcome looks anything like I’m seeing here, it’s a win-win. Yes it’s a win-win anyway.

Dr. Delgado: I just want to show you some pictures of some before and afters. See, afterwards we’ve trimmed it down, we’ve contoured it, incisions you know are good, his overall shape has a nice contour to it. Here’s a guy who we saw, this is a year later, he had liposuction and glandular excision and ultrasound of his chest, but you see how now his pectoralis you can actually see? I like showing this because of the power of contraction of the skin. Look how much you have contracted down, I mean, that’s with an incision this big, you know. And so, you know, of course I tell this guy well, you know, you know, you could have a contraction problem, it may not contract as much down.

David: So do you have to cut his nipples at all?

Dr. Delgado: No, just the incision, just one little incision.

David: Look at the size difference, it’s amazing, yeah.