BMI too high for a Brazilian Butt Lift surgery?

It is a pleasure to answer your question. You will get a much better result if you can get as close to your ideal weight prior to your cosmetic surgery. Neither procedure should be considered a weight loss tool. Having a high BMI could be risky for you during and after surgery and for this reason I would encourage you to loose some weight before considering getting a surgery done. As physician, my first priority is keeping my patients safe and not perform surgery that could be risky. Hope this helps. Good luck.

Brazilian
Butt Lift (BBL) is simply the AUGMENTATION (not lifting) of the buttocks with
fat after the butt and its surroundings were shaped with Liposuction. The idea
is NOT to simply pump fat into a smaller unattractive butt and transform it
into a much larger uglier butt but to create a more harmonious, attractive
looking butt which happens to be larger.

What constitutes an attractive butt?I suggest you google the
image BUNDA (Portuguese, spoken in Brazil, for Butt). The ideal, youthful female
butt IS :
- DISTINCT, It has clear borders of where it starts and ends.
- HEMISPHERIC, it looks like a full round hemisphere NOT a pear or a blob
- has a V ZONE, V shaped depression
where the upper butt cheeks diverge (Some have 2 dimples)
- has a SHELF or a BACK SCOOP ( medically a lumbar lordosis) in the lower back
with
- THREE mild muscle LINES of the lower back created by the ERECTOR SPINAE
muscles

Sculpting
liposuction AROUND the buttocks can create much of this without putting fat
into the buttocks. But, to get fullness and fill the lateral (Trochanteric)
depression, some fat is required (i.e. BBL).

FAT AS A
FILLER
Unlike other fillers, fat is quite different. Although it makes the skin appear
much younger and in some cases radiant due to its content of stem cells it has
several considerations. Fat survival in its new location depends on:
- how much trauma did the fat suffer in the process of liposuction and transfer
into the buttocks? The more trauma, the more cell loss
- How fast did the blood supply of the buttocks reach and attach itself to the
grafted fat cells? The longer it takes the fat to be nourished, the more fat
cells will die and volume will be lost (This is caused by putting huge amounts
of fat into the buttock, greatly increasing the pressure and blocking the blood
supply. This is seen by putting the fat in in large clumps instead of small
droplets. By doing so only the surface gets oxygen and the inner fat dies. This
is caused by people seating on their butts increasing the pressure and shear
forces and occluding the blood supply).
- Fat is a living ENERGY STORING tissue. If you lose weight, it will gradually
shrink – if you gain weight, it will get much larger. So, if your weight is
unstable you must take this into consideration.
- Fat HAS WEIGHT. The only way adding fat to the buttocks or breasts would
magically lift them would be IF it contained Helium. It does not. The more fat
we add to either the breast or the buttocks, the more weight we add to them and
with time they WILL sag.

BBL AND
OBESITY

If you have
a BMI of 30 and higher, you are classified as “obese”. At this point, a lot of
cosmetic operations would NOT look as nice on you AND be associated with a
higher rate of complications.

Your
Options? Lose weight to enhance your results and your long term health OR find
someone who will operate on you for PURELY financial gain and deliver a
mediocre result, at best, which would make SUBSEQUENT surgery on the area much
harder due to scarring.

Personally, in
many women with a full buttocks and borderline obesity, I advise weight loss or
I would do a BACK SCOOP LIPOSUCTION which enhances the appearance of the
already existing (large) butt and make it fuller appearing. The recovery is
quicker and easier than a BBL and you will not have to avoid sitting on your
butt.

Peter Aldea,
MD
Memphis, TN