Queens Clinic: Breast clinic, Harley Street, London

Queens Clinic is a highly renowned and leading breast clinic in London. Situated in the centre of London, Queens Clinic continues to maintain the highest level of consultancy and offers the services of senior advisers with the most concurrent and advanced knowledge regarding all subjects within the area of gynaecology.

Gynaecology, obstetric, infertility, and sexual health have been Queens Clinic’s main areas of expertise for many years. They provide services to a variety of clients from every part of the world, some of them travel from elsewhere in the UK but many travel from overseas.

Queens Clinic considers itself an international faculty with extensive knowledge of treating patients with different backgrounds from all over the world. Queens Clinic staff are very friendly and speak  English, Arabic, Russian, French, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and the majority of eastern European languages.

Due to the clinic's central location, Queens Clinic patients benefit from the excellent inner-city infrastructure, allowing them to access to the clinic by car, tube, or bus.

The clinic's interior decor has been designed with maximum care to help patients relax and make them feel at home. The clinic has all major facilities in-house such as ultrasound, hyfrecator, and microscope for immediate microscopy. The clinic undertakes minor gynaecological procedures such as insertions and removal of coils, treatment of cervical erosions, polyp removals, and removal of warts on the premises.

Queens Clinic has laboratory facilities (TDL) which provide immediate results. This enables them to carry out diagnoses and treatment in a very short period of time (sometimes only a few hours) or 48 hours if something needs to be cultured.

Queens Clinic carries out their work in accordance with the policy and procedures which are controlled by the protocol of the National Care Standard for good practice.

Queens Clinic is accredited by all major medical insurance companies in Britain and receives all medically insured patients world wide. Telephone lines are open 24 hours and are answered by qualified medical and paramedical personnel with a full range of knowledge.

Queens Clinic receives regular auditing to ensure standards are met, and their staff attend the majority of relevant conferences in the UK and worldwide. The clinic is medically insured with MPS and has a continuous professional development program.

The clinicians and surgeons at Queens Clinic are all registered with the UK principle registry of the General Medical Council (GMC) and their medical practice is conducted within the GMC code of practice. The clinic's senior surgeons are accredited by major hospitals in London and operate in The Wellington Hospital, which is a top level private hospital in the UK. Operations in The Wellington Hospital are done under general or local anaesthetics. Queens Clinic surgeons also operate in other hospitals around UK, as well as overseas. 

Breast treatment and surgery

Breast awareness is an important part of caring of your body. Being breast aware is about becoming familiar with your breasts and the changes that they go through throughout your life. It means knowing how your breasts look and feel normally so that you notice any changes that might be unusual for you

In addition, the breasts are parts of a female mammal's body which contain the organs that secrete milk used to feed infants. This article focuses on human female breasts, but it should be noted that male humans also have breasts (although usually less prominent) that are structurally identical and homologous to the female, as they develop embryologically from the same tissues. While the mammary glands that produce milk are present in the male, they normally remain undeveloped. In some situations male breast development does occur, a condition called gynecomastia. Milk production can also occur in both men and women as a rare adverse effect of some medicinal drugs (such as some antipsychotic medication) or in endocrine disorders.

Lymphatic drainage

About 75% of lymph from the breasts travels to the ipsilateral axillary lymph nodes. The rest travels to parasternal nodes, to the other breast, or abdominal lymph nodes. The axillary nodes include the pectoral, subscapular, and humeral groups of lymph nodes. These drain to the central axillary lymph nodes, then to the apical axillary lymph nodes. The lymphatic drainage of the breasts is particularly relevant to oncology, since cancer cells can break away from a tumour (breast cancer being a common cancer), and spread to other parts of the body through the lymph system by a process known as metastasis.

Function of the breast

The function of the mammary glands in female breasts is to nurture the young by producing milk, which emanates from the nipples during lactation. However, zoologists point out that no female mammal other than the human has breasts of comparable size when not lactating and that humans are the only primate that have permanently swollen breasts. This suggests that the external form of the breasts is connected to factors other than lactation alone.

The mammary glands that secrete the milk from the breasts actually make up a relatively small fraction of the overall breast tissue. During ovulation, the increased estrogen present in the female body results in a slight swelling of the breasts.

Size, shape and composition

Most of the human female breast is actually composed of adipose tissue (fat) and connective tissue, rather than the mammary glands. The primary anatomical support for the breasts is thought to be provided by the Cooper's ligaments, with additional support from the skin covering the breasts themselves, and it is this support which determines the shape of the breasts. The breasts naturally sag through ageing, as the ligaments become elongated. This process may be accelerated by high impact exercises, and a Sagging brassiere may reduce this effect by providing external support, although the health benefits of wearing a brassiere are not universally accepted. Sagging breasts (ptosis) are considered undesirable by some, and some older women seek cosmetic surgery to raise their busts.

As breasts are mostly composed of adipose tissue, their size can change over time if the woman gains or loses weight. It is also typical for them to grow in size during pregnancy and whilst breastfeeding, mainly due to hypertrophy of the mammary gland in response to the hormone prolactin. The size of a woman's breasts usually fluctuates during the menstrual cycle, particularly with premenstrual water retention. An increase in breast size is also a common side effect of use of the contraceptive pill.

According to the results of the "Size UK" survey, the average bra size in the UK has increased from a 34B in the 1950s to a 36C today, and the average size for U.S. women is a 34B as of 2005 by the CDC. Women with exceptionally large size breasts may experience back pain, whereas some women suffer from insecurity about their breasts, and in some cultures women who are unhappy with their size often seek surgery either to artificially reduce or enlarge their breasts.

It is typical for a woman's breasts to be unequal in size (statistically it is slightly more common for the left breast to be the larger), particularly whilst the breasts are developing during puberty. In some rare cases, one breast may be greatly larger or smaller than the other, or fail to develop entirely.

Development

The development of a woman's breasts, during puberty, is caused by sex hormones, chiefly estrogen. This hormone has been demonstrated to cause the development of woman-like, enlarged breasts in men, a condition called gynecomastia, and is sometimes used deliberately for this effect in male-to-female sex reassignment surgery.

A number of medical conditions are known to cause abnormal development of the breasts during puberty. Virginal breast hypertrophy is a condition which involves excessive growth of the breasts during puberty, and in some cases the continued growth beyond the usual pubescent age. Breast hypoplasia is a condition where one or both breasts fail to develop during puberty.

If you have any concerns regarding your breast(s), contact a specialist immediately.

Services offered

• Treatment of breast problems

• Early diagnosis of breast tumours

• Treatment of nipple discharge

Contact details

Queens Clinic

96 Harley Street
London

W1G 7HY

Location map

Disclaimer

Intuition Communication Ltd bears no responsibility for information published on this website, which concerns or relates to advertisers and their products and services. Read Disclaimer in full.