Treatment Provider

Daniel Barrett, MD
Board Certified Plastic Surgeon
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My case is a bit unusual. Before surgery, I was a...

My case is a bit unusual. Before surgery, I was a 32B (or 34A). After surgery, I have asymmetric breasts. I still wear my old bars 32B - the right breast fills the cup very nicely compared to before the surgery, the left one, not so much. The result is a little disappointing. I really like my right breast, but the asymmetry makes me feel very uncomfortable. I think the left breast also increased a little bit in size, but it is visibly smaller than the right one. The breasts healed nicely without scars, but my liposuction scars are very visible even after using silicon cream daily.
Always wanted bigger breasts and fat transfer seemed perfect. I went to 3 different doctors and Dr. Barrett's office was the one that I liked the most. Very friendly and professional. Dr. Barrett also made the most optimistic prediction. He said it was very possible to get 1 cup increase while the other doctors suggested 1/2 cup and 3/4 cup. So naturally, I went with Dr. Barrett's clinic.
Regarding the actual surgery, it lasted about 3-4 hours under general anesthesia. Doctor took out about 1500cc of fat from my flanks and abdomen. I was shocked at how much hidden fat I had! Then he put around 325cc in each of my breast. I came out of the surgery with giant balloon like breasts. My boyfriend liked them lol while I liked the new look, I wanted subtle increase and was very eager to see them get softer. Well, that took a very long time to happen.
The pros: I had very little bruising from the surgery. They disappeared within a week. The breasts pretty much never had any scars, not to mention that I scar easily. The pain was bearable, I took hydrocodone during the first post surgery week to relief the pain.
Now the cons: there are always risks associated with every surgery. You know they will happen, but not likely and probably not to you. I thought that way too, but it happened to me. I started having a fever around day 3 post surgery. I was on antibiotics and on day 4 it went away. Called Dr. Barrett's office and his assistant Brandi told me it's normal and since it went away there was nothing to worry about. It came back on day 5 and carried over to day 6 which was my first post op appointment to remove the stitches. I went in they found out that my left lipo site has been infected. When the surgical tape was removed, pus burst out. It became clear that the random unknown infection was causing the fever. I thought okay, just a minor infection, now it's gone! WRONG. That was only the beginning of my misery. No more fevers after that. My right breast started to drop on post op day 10. I was so excited that it happened so quickly. I was uncertain why the left one had a different schedule, but thought it should happen soon or later. It didn't because it got infected.
My left breast never dropped and became very painful and swollen. Dr. Barrett took it very seriously and performed an aspiration on me and sent the pus to a lab. He said that the infection shouldn't affect the fat survival rate (so he thought). The first aspiration was painful but I didn't mind because a swollen and painful breast was much worse! Little did I know, that was only the first aspiration. After that, I had 4 more because the lab results took a while so there were two weeks between when the first aspiration took place and when I was prescribed the correct antibiotics. During this time, I was in constant pain, fear and panic. I didn't know what was going on, and didn't know why the antibiotics didn't work. Doctor Barrett couldn't explain why one breast got infected. I took a total of 4 types of antibiotics. The first one was standard antibiotics post surgery. Then I was prescribed Clindamycin which was a stronger antibiotics, but it didn't treat my infection at all. When the first lab result came back, I was put on Metronidazole. But it turned out that I had two bacteria that was causing the infection. So I also started taking Cipro. The metronidazle and Cipro combined was horrible. I had to take 6 pills a day for like 3 weeks and it made me dizzy and nauseous. The swelling finally went away in early August (surgery was on June 30). By that time, my breasts had already become asymmetric and my left breast was full of needle marks from the aspirations.
All I think about now is what if my surgery just went okay. Even though I wish I could've gone up to a 32C, I still love the result of my right breast. I think the shape is so perfect. Then I look at my left one and start to get sad. I didn't want to write this review while I was recovering because I felt very emotional and hopeless. I waited 6 months so I can be as objective as I can as I share my experience. As I mentioned before there is always a risk associated with any surgery. However, I don't want to discourage anyone from getting this surgery. Even Dr. Barrett said he's never seen it happen before.
The asymmetry is more obvious in person. In the pictures I posted, you can see that my left side is uneven. It's a tiny bumpy on the waist line compared to the right side which is very curvy and smooth. Sometimes I can't help but wonder why the two sides of my body turned out so differently. The left abdomen is left uneven, breast still has a dull pain from time to time, breast is a smaller size, lipo site was infected with pus, left breast was infected and swollen for at least two weeks. The right side had zero issues. I also want to mention that I'm in perfect health as far as I know. I kind of want a second surgery to correct the imperfection but I'm not sure if it's wroth it. What if this whole nightmare happens again? For an expensive surgery like this, the result is disappointing. I don't know if something actually went wrong during the surgery or I was just very unlucky. It is very strange that the infection happened to one side only, and it happened to both the lipo site and breast.

Provider Review

Board Certified Plastic Surgeon
9701 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, California
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Dr. Barrett is a wonderful doctor. His entire stuff is attentive and caring. But I'm unable to give him a higher rating because the result of my breast fat grafting surgery is disappointing.