Fat Grafting with Breast Implants

This is a very hot topic in plastic surgery today!

Fat grafting in the presence of breast implants can solve some problems that previously required implant surgery of some kind.

Fat is the new breast tissue substitute.

And there are many reasons to be using fat to repair breasts problems.

In my practice, I use fat with breast implants in several places.

Breast Volume Loss

Breast volume can be lost due to many issues.

Sometimes it can be from postpartum breast involution.

This means loss of breast volume after pregnancy.

The breasts can shrink and become much smaller than before pregnancy simply due to hormonal changes.

Even with breast implants in place, the upper pole volume can decrease.

It can also occur from trauma.

I recently repaired the breast of a hockey fan who was hit in the breast with a hockey puck!

She lost volume in the traumatized breast that we repaired with fat grafting.

Her story and surgery can be viewed here. Her appearance on the Dr Hockey Podcast can be viewed here.

This is a very common place for fat grafting.

In these cases, many times the breast implant is in place.

Thus, fat grafting with breast implants can be useful for this purpose.

Especially if there is radiation injury to the reconstructed breast, fat grafting becomes very useful.

Today, many women are opting for breast implant removal.

These patients are simply done with their breast implants.

Thus, fat grafting may be done for breasts that have no implants and just simply want to maintain volume.

Fat grafting is NOT the same as breast implants in terms of shape.

However, it can provide enough volume to make the difference in terms of the post-removal look.

This is a patient with implant removal and fat grafting because of her Allergan Textured implants.

The technique for Fat grafting is very specific.

This will be the topic of another article of mine so stay tuned.

However, the videos of some of my cases show this technique and I welcome you to view these videos.