Autologous fat grafting for breast augs

Dr. Robert Brueck MD is a regular blogger here on subjects of health and plastic surgery. He also appears on his Fort Myers Plastic Surgery website at Beauty-by-Brueck.com

I think one of the newest emerging trends in plastic surgery is autologous (your own) fat grafting with stem cells.

Recently I attended a cosmetic surgery symposium on the use of ones own body fat to augment the breast. The results presented were truly quite remarkable. But being the old stage through 32 years of experience that I have. I realize they will present their best cases and they were quite remarkable. Do I think this will supplant or replace standard breast augmentation? No, for one thing the patient has to have enough extra body fat to use as donor sites. Secondly it is very costly i.e. maybe $6-$8,000.00 per session and a person may require 2 or 3 sessions to get to size they want. So cost is a big consideration.

Another concern has to do with micro calcifications which can occur when some of the fat doesn’t survive and under goes dissolution. These “micro calcifications” can be suspicious for breast cancer. A recent report from a hospital in Beijing studied 48 women over a 10 year span 1999-2009 who had autologous fat grafts to their breasts. In eight women, micro calcifications developed that were regarded as “highly suspicious.” This led to biopsies, but none revealed breast cancer. This can be very troubling to anyone.

So doubt remains-questions linger. Right now it may be best to sit on the sidelines until more is known.