Unwanted Body Fat: Alternative to Breast Implants?
How Fat Transfer could provide a natural alternative to Silicone
For all the women in the world who undergo breast augmentation to enhance their figure, there are more who aren’t happy with their bust who do not. After all, breast implants require invasive surgery, and that carries with it certain risks. But what if there was another way? A way that used your own unwanted body fat?
One plastic surgeon may have found a way to do just that. ASPS member Roger K. Khouri, MD, has come up with a new method of using fat transfer to augment breasts without the use of implants and without any invasive surgery.
Fat transfer is not a new idea in the world of breast enhancement. However, fat cell necrosis (cell death) has always been an issue with the procedure. On average, only 55 percent of fat cells survived the procedure.
However, Dr. Khouri’s method involves a bra-like device of his own creation, called Brava®. Worn for a few weeks prior to the fat transfer procedure, the Brava uses a slight vacuum to “pre-expand” the breasts, giving the fat tissue space to be injected. According to a report Dr. Khouri lead-authored, the rate of cell survival was 80 percent after undergoing pre-expansion, as opposed to 55 percent without pre-expansion.
This has the potential to change the face of the breast enhancement industry as we know it. Breast augmentation could become an outpatient procedure, without any sort of incision. According to Dr. Khouri’s report, women can look forward to their breast sizes being as much as doubled in an afternoon.
While promising, the procedure is still in the developmental stage and is not likely to replace the breast implant in the very near future, but Dr. Khouri and his researchers believe their study “establishes a benchmark and a platform for further potential improvements.”