Breast Augmentation via Fat – On the Ropes?

Breast Augmentation, Plastic Surgery Comments (0)

A bit of a donnybrook has been brewing in plastic surgery between those who:

• Think breast enlargement with one’s own fat is the greatest thing since sliced bread
• Surgeons who turn thumbs down on the procedure

In one camp are a handful of cosmetic plastic surgeons who have taken fat from where you don’t want it and put it where you do. Those few surgeons reportedly have years of experience and many happy patients.

But detractors say if the transferred fat dies, it can calcify, turning into little stone-like materials that block X-rays and mammograms that spot early cancer.

The thumbs up cosmetic surgeons come back with studies showing that either not enough fat dies to make a difference or that the calcification doesn’t happen.

Human fat – despite the backbreaking lengths we go to getting rid of it – is actually very delicate outside the body and dies easily. The whole trick in autologous fat transfer is to put tiny drops of fat in places where it finds a blood supply and lives.

In China, where the numbers of all plastic surgery procedures are second only to the United States, six plastic surgeons from two Beijing hospitals studied the medical records of 48 patients who had breast augmentation with their own fat from 1999 to 2009.

Results? They found 16.7 percent of the study group – eight patients of the 48 – showed clustered micro-calcification in their breasts.

And there is the crux of the problem: on an X-ray or mammogram, the dead fat looks just like breast cancer. The researchers know that because they removed the tiny calcifications, sent them to the lab for analysis and found they were fat necrosis—dead fat deposits.

It’s also expensive, inconvenient, worrisome and painful to patients.

The most excellent and informative website Breast Implant Support Forum, reminds us that a fully qualified U.S. plastic surgeon performing breast enlargement with implants charges an average of about $4000.

However, fat transfer to the breasts is a much more tedious procedure and also requires liposuction. It requires about five to six hours for the surgeon to place the tiny fat drops in many layers of the breast, making the cost of plastic surgery up to $20,000.

That’s a lot of expense and a lot of worry later on. Read how standard breast augmentation is done

(Read more about the Chinese breast augmentation study.)

Blogger @ January 28, 2011