Breast Augmentation with Fat, Breast Blog

Breast Augmentation with Fat

Blog about breast enlargement with your own fat from your Cincinnati plastic surgeons

Our Cincinnati plastic surgeons perform a high volume of breast augmentation. Every once in a while a prospective augmentation patient wishes aloud that I could suck the fat out of her rear and put it into her breasts. Just imagine– get rid of the unwanted adipose that is not cooperating with your favorite jeans and reassign those fat cells to the task of increasing your cup size. Now that is a win-win situation, right? Read on…

Breast augmentation is incredibly common, with about 300,000 women having the procedure in the United States each year. The satisfaction with the procedure is very high and the vast majority of women would have breast implants placed again. In our Cincinnati, Ohio center, about half of women choose silicone and half choose saline. Although the current range of breast implants are safe, there are obvious advantages to using your own tissues, if possible.

Breast enlargement with implants may require further operations in the future because breast implants are not permanent devices and can wear out over time. Breast augmentation with your own fat avoids this problem. Also, you can usually feel breast implants to some degree. This is not bothersome to most patients, and silicone implants are very soft. However, there is an advantage to using fat because most of the breast is made of this in the first place. It feels more natural because it is natural.

Despite these advantages, caution is advised. We do not know the long term effects of large volume fat injection into the breast. It is probably safe, but studies are looking at this. Smaller volumes of fat injection are frequently used as a supplemental procedure in breast reconstruction. It is a fantastic way to fine tune the shape of a reconstructed breast.

One concern is that injected fat does not always survive. When it dies, it can harden from calcium crystals forming in the expired clumps of fat. When you are using the larger volumes of fat required for cosmetic breast enlargement, this creates two potential problems. First, you may feel these calcified areas as lumps. Second, these areas can be seen on mammograms, which may interfere with breast cancer surveillance. These issues are not generally a problem when the fat is injected in tiny amounts. Small particles of fat tend to survive well.

Beyond safety are some practical issues. It takes many hours to perform this procedure since the fat must be injected in minute quantities at a time. It can take as many as six or eight hours. This means that the procedure will cost much more than a one to two hour breast augmentation with implants. Additionally, since all of the fat may not survive transfer, multiple procedures may be necessary to get enough fat to create the right size. Thin women may not even have enough extra fat to achieve the size they want.

As you can see, this is more complex than it initially seems. This blog only scratches the surface. Fat injection for breast enlargement will likely turn out to be a great option for some patients, but not everyone. Breast implants provide safe, consistent results and help many women achieve their breast size goals. Contact us to set up a consultation in one of our Cincinnati area offices today.