Fat grafts to the breast come with a lifetime of risks

Fat grafting to various areas of the body are gaining in popularity and structural fat grafting to the face, buttock, liposuction dents and in breast reconstruction defects have become widely practiced. In addition data from Asia and Europe show some early promising results with fat grafting to the breast.

Please accept however my firm warning! No matter how skilled a surgeon might be in placing grafts within the breast, reported complications are frequent and growing in number. The volume of fat required to enlarge the breast make the technique prone to calcifications and oil cysts as well as frequent ares of induration (dense lumps). These multiple cysts and lumps produce calcifications which will be visible on breast screening examinations and may pose the risk that the breast cancer screening tools we have at our disposal will always show an abnormal result. These changes will be present over your lifetime. They may result in the need for frequent breast biopsies. You may need a lifetime of close monitoring and followup.

Though it is an easy concept to place the fat into the breast the complications are very difficult to correct and cannot reverse the changes to your mammogram.

You express concerns about dents resulting from the liposuction required to harvest the fat for your breast augmantation, yet this may be your smallest regret.

Check out information on the ASPS web site. You cannot be too well informed.

Dr. Seify had succinctly summarized some of the concerns with breast augmentation using fat injection.

I only have one, but very important concern.

PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT THE FAT IS NOT HARVESTED WITH UAL TECHNIQUE.

The fat obtained with UAL is completely dead and you will essentially be injecting oil into the breasts which will result in cyst formation and other potential complications.

Although fat is easy to put on and hard to eliminate, it is an extremely delicate tissue and the cells must be obtained using a delicate technique. Many surgeons strongly advocate syringe liposuction (rather than a suction machine). The fat is typically prepared to eliminate the ruptured cells as well as any blood.

However, as Dr. Seify stated, this is largely investigational and currently not the standard of care. There are many exciting options in the future inlcuding the use of stem cells harvested from liposuction material but this remains to be put in to widespread use.

I hope this helps!

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