Suzanne Somers Says Stem Cell Breast Reconstruction is "Awesome" [VIDEO]
Makenzie on 8 May 2012 at 9:00am
When someone asked the RealSelf doctors about the possibility stem cell breast reconstruction, many said that it was a very distant and uncertain reality. Fast forward 3 years and actress Suzanne Somers is now the happy face of this treatment -- which has so far been successful for her.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001, Somers has a lumpectomy which she says removed more tissue than she expected. "I thought it’d take like a quarter’s worth out. But when they took the bandages off, there was like, two-thirds of my breast gone,” she told Dr. Oz. “Now throughout my career, I’ve been kind of known as a sex symbol…how ironic here I am, sex symbol, and I have one and a third breasts."
"The only thing I was offered when I first had this surgery was implants," Somers told Piers Morgan last week. "I said 'What, you're going to take my good one too?' And they said 'Well you've got to have two for symmetry.' ... I said, 'Sew me up, something better will come.'"
Luckily for her, it did. Check out this video of her recent interview on CNN:
Stay tuned for more on stem cell breast reconstruction. And be sure to read our previous post about stem cells for cosmetic breast augmentations.
High density fat grafting to the breast for reconstruction is performed routinely by plastic surgeons and is absolutely allowed by the FDA. However, a mixture of freshly isolated stem cells (via enzymatic digestion) from the SVF combined with a fat graft must have an IRB *and* an IND approved FDA application. I am 100% sure about this because we received written guidance from the FDA on the subject , as well as spoke with them directly over the past 3 years.
Thank you for clearing that up, Dr. Rodriguez!
Thank you for sharing that with us. I'm actually working on a follow-up about this procedure being performed in the US, because I have heard a lot of opinions on the subject in the past week.
I'm curious -- did you and/or your friend have a "stem cell" augmentation, or just fat transfer? It's my understanding so far that fat transfer for reconstruction has been happening for a while, but actually isolating the stem cells (as Suzanne has done) for that purpose requires a few legal hoop jumps in addition to the stem cell isolation.