Thinking about breast augmentation surgery? If you are getting breast implants for purely cosmetic purposes, you will have to put forth the entire budget for the surgery on your own including the cost of the implants. Those who are getting reconstructive surgery may have an easier time financially since the bill can be passed to the insurance company. You may have heard that silicone gel breast implants cost more than saline breast implants. How much more will you have to pay for your surgery if you choose silicone?

Typically saline implants are about $1,500-$2,500. Silicone gel breast implants usually cost $1,000-$2,000 more, placing them in the $2,500-$4,500 range. So if you’ve read on some websites that the variance is great and on others that it is small, both are right in a sense. It depends on the options (texture for example) that you ask for and also where you buy your implants and get your surgery performed. This is only the cost of the implants though; the surgery itself will also include the surgeon’s and anesthesiologist’s fees, the facility fee, and sometimes additional fees for compression garments or other expenses. This means the surgery could be $8,000-$10,000 in an expensive urban area. In a more rural location your surgery might be closer to $4,500-$7,000. The huge regional variations reflect differences in demand and local economies.

One thing which you will have to have in mind when you get silicone implants is that revisions may be more expensive in the future with silicone than with saline. If a saline implant needs adjustment you don’t need to have the implant removed and replaced, just drained a bit or filled up a bit through a tube. If a silicone implant needs adjustment though there’s nothing to do but replace it and pay for a new implant on top of the price of the adjustment surgery. Of course, even a saline implant can rupture and need to be replaced completely, so in all cases with breast implants you should be considering the possibility of future costs. Save as much as you can on your implant surgery and set some money aside in case you need revisions later!