The clinic’s chief physician has presented the clinic’s results with a fat transplant to the breast during the “Congress of Scandinavian Association of Plastic Surgeons” in Finland, Helsinki June 14:
A Preliminary Evaluation of Breast Enlargement with Fat Grafting – Can It Replace Breast Implants?
Thursday, June 14th, 2012, 1:40 pm
Oslo Plastikkirurgi Clinic, Oslo, Norway
Aim
Fat grafting has been a well-known clinical method for reconstruction of small defects and recently applied in the face, to breast reconstruction and to breast augmentation as an alternative to breast implants.
Since 2008, the Oslo Plastic Surgery Clinic has carried out 38 breast enlargements with fat grafting on patients with hypoplasia, asymmetry and in a few cases with mastopexia. The patients had to fulfill three criteria to become a candidate for surgery: no use of foreign objects, existing fat to be corrected – not just a “donor site”, and a realistic expectation of volume increase of the breasts.
Methods
Fat was usually harvested from abdomen, thigh, buttocks or knee. The fat was machine-centrifuged for three minutes and grafted into intersecting and parallel canals through small incisions using Coleman’s cannulas. A loose bra was used postoperatively. In recent patients we used a manual centrifuge and these patients (10 patients) are still under evaluation.
Results and discussion
Average injected fat in left breast: 219 ml, right breast: 221 ml. Resorption rate was 40-60% in most cases, but 7 patients had more than. New injections were performed on three patients. Three others chose breast implants because there was not enough donor fat and / or because their expectation of breast volume with this method was not satisfactory. Two small cysts were observed. Patients achieved a natural feeling, better fullness in desired areas and removed unwanted fat. However, it was far from all patients who obtained
the desired volume. Furthermore, it is rather difficult to calculate gained residual volume. The method is still in the establishment phase. Factors like centrifugation, local anesthetics, cannulas used, preoperative expansion and injected fat amount still have unclear effect on the final result.
Conclusion
Provided strict selection, this method could be a good alternative for breast enlargement. Longer follow-up time and multicenter studies should be performed before final conclusions can be made.
