Breast Enlargement through Fat Transfer – What’s Old

The surgical art of breast enlargement has been active since the 1960s. Paraffin, silicone, sponges, and saline have all been tried as suitable breast implants, all with mixed luck. Advocates for fat transfer will point out that doctors used fat transfer over a hundred years ago. What they often don’t point out is that these early attempts were unsuccessful and discontinued. The transplanted fat just wouldn’t stay put.

While doctors have played around with the concept of moving natural fat stores into other parts of the body to sculpt the body, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that Dr. Mel Bircoll, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, was able to perfect the modern art of breast enlargement using fat transfer. He used a combination of liposuction surgery to harvest the fat cells and micro-injections to move the fat into the target areas of the breasts.

The source for the fat is typically from the thigh, buttocks, or thighs. The fat is usually harvested and prepared in a process right before the fat transfer. The survival rate for the transferred fat cells depends on a number of things. Factors include the method of fat retrieval, the method of fat preparation, and method for depositing the fat cells. Doctors will generally inject more fat cells than what the final desired result will be. This is because a percentage will be naturally reabsorbed by the body.

Recovery time for breast augmentation using fat transfer is much quicker than other forms of breast augmentation. This is because the process is less invasive than the surgery required for saline implants. Results for breast augmentation using fat transfer so far are so far, so good.

Cons for using fat transfer to augment breast size include:

· Not sure about how long the results will last.
· May make it more difficult for mammograms to work well enough.
· Breasts can only be enlarged so much with fat injections.

Pros for using fat transfer to augment breast size include:

· Breast augmentation with fat transfer tends to provide the most natural looking breasts.
· The implant is a natural substance; don’t have to worry about having foreign substances in the body.
· Do not have to worry about removing or replacing the substance.
· Unlike other dermal fills that get absorbed by the body, fat usually stays where it’s planted as long as it stays alive. Also usually better accepted by the patient whereas some manufactured fillers can cause an allergic reaction.

Incidentally, fat transfer is also a much used procedure:

· to help even out facial wrinkles
· to even out the texture on the back of hands
· to sculpt the buttocks