Most likely, YES. I’ve been doing this fat-transfer-to-the-breasts thing for over three years now and it really is the closest thing to a miracle that exists in plastic surgery. I’ve said it to all of my patients and I’ll say it again: If I hadn’t already had all my fat sucked out ten years ago I would totally have it done in a second. I know I’ve already blogged multiple times about it, but now I would like to address this specific question that everyone who wants to get rid of their breast implants asks me.

Let me start out by saying that I am absolutely all for breast implants. I still put a lot of them in and they’re great. They are. Most of the time. When everything’s good, they usually look better than real breasts of comparable size, because they give you that upper breast fullness that we start losing in our mid-twenties. You can get them done in a way that nobody will know, or in a way that everyone will know and show them off. You can go without wearing a bra. Men like them (see previous post, Do Men Like Breast Implants?) And they don’t sag like natural breast tissue does.  Women who come to see me for breast reductions can never understand why anyone would want to make their breasts bigger. It’s simple–DD breast implants defy gravity much better than real DD breasts that hang and pull, causing back and neck pain and bra-strap grooving and rashes.

But, as many of you out there know–and you’re probably the only ones still reading this blog–with breast implants, you’re never out of the woods. They move, they ripple, they (RARELY) rupture (rupture rate of the new Sientra implants recently reported at less than two percent, so that’s good.) They can be great for five years and then, for no reason you develop a capsular contracture (rates reported at anywhere from eight to thirteen percent for all gel implants). Or even worse, you could be one of the unlucky ones who gets a contracture from the beginning, and winds up getting one side removed and replaced three times in less than two years. Dr. Roger Khouri, one of the “fathers” of fat grafting to the breast calls those patients “Implant Cripples.” Sounds harsh, but he makes a point. For some women, they just never work.

So far, my patients and I have been extremely happy with the results with this procedure–removing breast implants from someone who’s “done” with them and re-augmenting with their own fat.

My goal with this particular blog is to help those of you who are genuinely investigating this procedure to understand how it’s being done. When patients ask me about it, they seem to have an image of me just taking out the implants and putting a big glob of fat in the space that’s left behind.

That’s not how it works.

I think that as surgeons, we make the mistake of assuming that our patients have a clear mental picture  of the anatomy of their surgery without explaining it to them, and then we’re confused when they don’t understand the limitations and mechanics of a certain procedure.

Just warning you, this is about to get somewhat dry and technical, but is extremely useful information for those of you who really need to know:

Whenever I am discussing a breast procedure with a new patient, I usually draw pictures like the ones below, which are diagrams of where  “under the muscle” (left)  and “over the muscle” (right) breast implants sit.

The white line around the implant is the “capsule.” This is your own normal scar tissue that has formed around the implant. If this scar tissue becomes thick, it squeezes on the implant, making it feel hard, and that’s a capsular contracture. 

When I am switching someone’s implants out for their own fat, after the lipo, I remove the implant through an inframammary (in the crease under your breast) incision. The fat is then placed not in the space where the implant was, but in tiny micro-tunnels in the layers of tissue between the capsule and the skin. This is one of the cases where we say that the “capsule is your friend” because it is keeping the fat from getting into the space where the implant used to be. And it’s okay to leave the capsule there. If we’re not putting a new implant in, and there’s not ruptured silicone all over the place, it doesn’t have to come out. It’s your own tissue and it will eventually reabsorb. A drain is placed in that space (those of you who’ve had multiple breast aug revisions are probably familiar with those) and the space closes down on its own.

How much fat can you get in there?

Depends on how much you have, and how thick the layer of tissue is that I’m putting it in. As you can imagine, it’s better for everyone if your implants are sub-muscular, because then there’s the added layer of muscle to put the fat into. Most of the time I can get enough fat in so that when I’m done, the breasts look almost as big as they did with the implants. In fact, most of my patients who have undergone this procedure laugh about how their friends say, “Are you sure she took them out?” (Obviously they haven’t explained the lipo part of it. )

But won’t my breasts be saggy afterward?

They might. And you may elect to do a mastopexy (lift.) I personally prefer to wait to do the lift as a second surgery because the breasts get swollen when the fat is placed, and you can get a better lift if you wait till the swelling goes down.

So, for those of you who are considering this procedure, I hope that this blog helped you understand exactly what it’s all about.

Before I leave you–here’s an update on the “Paris Girl” that everyone always asks me about, two years out from her fat transfer to the breast, still wearing a C cup.

She has no scars, and her breasts look and feel so natural in fact, that when she had a little tryst with a member of a royal family over there in Europe…well, I guess you could call it, “The Prince and the Pea.”

XO

LQ