Breast enhancement, or augmentation mamoplasty, is a cosmetic surgery performed to enhance the size and shape of breasts. The chief objective in doing so is to increase the person's sex appeal.

Breast enhancement has been in the center of controversy for three decades. It is supposed to be a risky procedure, causing certain disorders in the anatomy of the person, and the debate is whether it is prudent to gamble with health for the sake of obtaining that elusive hourglass figure. That notwithstanding, it is the second-most common prosthetic procedure, and in the year 2003 itself there had been 280,401 breast implants in the US alone.

Though the debate over breast implants is a fairly contemporary phenomenon, the surgery itself is not that modern. Historical evidences show that Japanese women used to inject silicones directly into their breasts during the World War II.

Before the discovery of silicone as an implant material, other materials such as paraffin were used for breast implants. Thomas Cronin and Frank Gerow, two plastic surgeons from Houston, were the first to develop silicone as a transplant material with the Dow Corning Corporation in 1961 and the first transplant was done on a woman in 1962.

One of the chief objections in this cosmetic prosthesis is the use of silicone gel, which has been restricted as an implant material by the Food and Drug Administration in the US. Breast implants have been suspected of causing autoimmune disease, however there is no documentation to validate this fact. Known hazards of breast augmentation are asymmetry, visibility, palpability, rupture, deflation, infection, scarring, and hardening of the capsule of the implant.

The strongest objection against breast implants comes from feminist groups who view it as a subjugation of women to men to pander to their sexual desires. It is not unknown of starlets and media women who undergo such surgeries to boost their careers; and in the process, giving vent to the allocution that it is a man's world.