I'm skinny but want butt injections. Is it safer to get your fat injected into your behind?

Regarding buttock augmentation, let me start off by saying that I currently see at least 1 - 2 patients per week that failed "brazilian buttock lift" (i.e. the fat melted away after 10 - 12 months) and are now seeking a more reliable and permanent option (i.e. buttock implants). Allow me to share with you some information that you may not hear elsewhere. There are only two proven safe and relatively effective methods for Buttock Augmentation and Hip Augmentation: 1) Autologous Fat Transfer (using your own fat, transferring from one area of the body to the other) and 2) Buttock/Hip Implants (semi-solid silicone rubber implants that cannot rupture &/or leak). Both are very good options so what it comes down to, like any surgery, is proper patient selection.Indeed because at least 50+ % of the fat transferred will melt away within a year, most patients are not good candidates because they lack an adequate amount of fat to harvest. Another tip is that if you purposely gain weight (i.e. fat) for the procedure, the fat you lose first as you get back to your baseline weight is that very same fat that was transferred into your buttock...so don't fall victim to this recommendation. Although using your own fat is relatively safe, the one serious complication that can rarely (< 1%) happen is "fat embolism" in which some of the fat gets into the blood stream and travels up into the lungs, heart, and/or brain causing serious problems. This complication is more likely to happen with the larger amount of fat being transferred. This is even more likely to happen when using fillers like PMMA and hyaluronic acids. Also fillers, when injected in large quantities, have a relatively high tendency to migrate away from the original area they were placed and tend to stimulate a lot of inflammation and a subsequent disastrous amount of scar tissue/hardening.Thus buttock/hip implants become a very good, safe, and long term reliable option for most patients seeking buttock augmentation (at least in my practice). I prefer to insert the buttock implants through a 2 inch long incision along the inner curve of each upper buttock cheek at the level of the tailbone, similar to two opposing parentheses ")(" (concealed within the crevice between the buttock cheeks) and the hip implants through a ~ 1 inch incision just below the beltline above the hip region. The buttock implant should always be placed under or within the gluteus maximus muscle. In this position, the implant is less palpable, less visible, and does not sag or shift/migrate over time unlike implants placed on top of the muscle. Therefore it is extremely important to seek consultation with a board certified plastic surgeon who specializes in this procedure (in fact both implants and fat transfer so that s/he is not bias). And in this case too, at least in my surgical practice, the infection rate is minimized to ~5%. Glad to help.Depending upon the amount of your current fat reserves and their distribution, you may or may not be a reasonable candidate for fat transfer. If you are wanting to utilize the fat to further augment your buttock in addition to implants, then I caution you against this. The reason being that the fat needs to be placed into the buttock muscles for optimal survival, however, this is exactly where the implant needs to reside and thus risks infection and/or death of the fat. Because of this risk, I frequently avoid fat grafting into a buttock that has an implant. Bottom line, I recommend consulting with a board certified plastic surgeon specialist in buttock augmentation (BOTH implants and fat transfer) to determine what option is best for you. Glad to help.

You have to have adequate donor site fat to graft to your buttocks, so "how skinny?" is the question that requires personal examination and consultation. Reasonable goals are also in order, since about half of the grafted fat does not survive, even in the most expert of hands.You may wish to consider buttock implants, though there are complications (infection requiring removal) that need to be understood and accepted. Some surgeons (and patients) are willing to accept these devastating complications; other are not.If you are so thin you don't have adequate fat for grafting, then BBL is not possible (by any surgeon). You can't use fat from someone else, BTW. Implants remain your only option, if you are willing to accept those risks. Make sure you understand the removal and re-operation policies of the surgeon you choose if you decide to go this route. My experience is that surgeons who do buttock implants tend to understate their complication rate, which I personally find too high to recommend this operation. That being said, I know of colleagues who do this operation well and are willing to accept these risks, so long as you are as well. Best wishes! Dr. Tholen

Fat transfer or buttock implants would be the two reasonable forms of buttock augmentation.Kenneth Hughes, MDLos Angeles, CA

This is a good question. Fat transfer from one part of rhe body to another requires one thing, that the parient has enough fat to donate. If not a contour defect or sunken area will frm where the fat was taken from. If this is the case, the irregularity may be very difficult to treat. To answer your question, orher than gaining weight in order to have fat to harvest, there are no good options for a thin patient desiring fat transfer. 

Buttock augmentation with fat has far lesser complications than an implant.Though there is always absorption of fat and resultant loss of volume, a decent degree of improvement can always be obtained. The only catch is that you should have enough amount of fat for transfer. It will really help if you can reply with a few photos or more details about you 

In order to have fat transferred to your bottom, you first have to have places from which you can harvest fat.For someone who is very slim, this may not be possible or may require liposuction in many different areas.There are limits on how much fat can be placed at any one time, and results tend to be less predictable than we would want.I suggest you consult with an experienced, board-certified plastic surgeon.Best of luck,Mats Hagstrom, M.D.