The Bachelor's Keira had breast surgery. Let's not kid ourselves about what that entails.

The best breasts Keira Maguire has ever seen are her own. It wasn’t always the case. Formerly an A cup, the Sydney-based reality television star has recently undergone breast augmentation surgery that’s taken her to a C.

As told to New Weekly, the former Bachelor contestant is proud of her decision – one she’d been mulling over a decade – and even more so of the end result.

“It’s not all about looks, but if you can enhance something or improve something, I’m all about it,” she said.

Keira’s experience and the accompanying bikini shoot is the kind of chirpy before-and-after story we’ve heard time and time again, one that makes breast enlargement procedures seem more like a beauty treatment than an invasive surgical procedure.

Previously self-conscious and “a bit depressed” about her breasts, she’s now “happy” and “feels like herself”.

“So basically [my surgeon] made a 4cm incision underneath my breast on the crease, and he went underneath the muscle, so it looks more natural,” she said. “It took an hour and a half – I was in and out in four hours.”

Easy, right?

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Not so much. As Vice President of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons Dr Gazi Hussain told Mamamia, it’s important to acknowledge the realities of what happens in between the carefully curated before and after shot.

“This is not a flippant procedure, this is not a small procedure. It is a proper operation, it’s an invasive operation; it’s not something you want to take lightly,” he said.

While the operation generally only takes a matter of hours, the days afterwards can be uncomfortable. There will be pain and swelling, patients will often be wrapped in compression bandages, and some will require a small drainage tube to funnel excess blood and fluid from the surgery site.

“Any form of surgery is proper surgery,” Dr Hussain said, “and proper surgery has risks, proper surgery has implications and potential complications.”

In the case of breast augmentation, those can include infection, internal bleeding, blood clotting, scarring, numbness, even difficulty breast feeding.

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With that in mind, it’s important, Dr Hussain said, that patients understand the gravity of the decision to undertake breast augmentation and recognise that it’s not as easily reversible as many people tend to think.

“It’s not like changing a hairstyle,” he said. “Removing a large foreign object has implications for the space that’s left behind.”

This can mean, among other things, stretching of the skin and looseness of breast tissue that may require additional surgery.

“The patient needs to get an idea from their surgeon about potentially what deformity they might be left with if the implants are taken out, and what may then need to be done to correct that,” Dr Hussain said.

In fact, even if a patient is happy with their enlarged breasts, it's important that they recognise there's a good chance they will need to undergo further procedures as time goes on.

While Dr Hussain has seen some women keep their implants for 30-40 years, he notes that with a man-made, foreign object, there are no guarantees.

"We always say to women there's a chance that implants may not be in there for the rest of their life, and that they may require changing or revision or updating at some stage in the future," he said.

It's for reasons like this that he encourages women not be influenced by "flippant or trivial" discussion about cosmetic procedures: "They need to have thought about this adequately, spend some time researching but also have frank conversations with their plastic surgeon."

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He recommends that women ask the following questions:

"Where will the procedure be done?; Who will be doing the procedure?; How many procedures like this has the surgeon done before?; What level of anaesthetic [is required]?; And is the facility that they are having the operation performed in an accredited facility, in terms of meeting minimum standards and requirements for general anaesthesia," he said.

"The other things the patient needs to know is whether there will be things like drains that will be required, and what sort of post-operative management they will get. And, of course, what are the potential risks and complications, and also how will those risks and complications be managed if they were to occur."

For more information contact your surgeon or visit the Australian Foundation for Plastic Surgery website here.