October 21, 2010 | Plastic Surgery
2 minute read
Although a controversial topic among plastic surgeons due to its inconsistent results, breast augmentation via fat injection may soon be a viable option for patients who wish to enlarge or rebuild their breasts, thanks to promising new technology.
Cytori Therapeutics recently developed new technology that may finally make natural breast augmentation with fat grafting a possibility.
Cytori’s Celution System offers doctors a new way to prepare fat harvested from a patient’s body and enrich it with stem cells. This stem cell-enriched fat may then be injected in the chest using another Cytori tool called the Celbrush to enhance natural breasts or rebuild breasts that have been deformed by lumpectomy or mastectomy.
A kind of natural regenerative cell therapy, breast reconstruction or augmentation with fat grafts prepared with the Celution System and injected with the Celbrush will purportedly improve the survival rate of the fat tissue after it is re-implanted.
Clinical studies are still being conducted in Europe to prove whether this claim is true, but if it is, it could mean that the Celution System and Celbrush have solved one of the major problems that has historically plagued doctors in their attempts to augment or reconstruct breasts via fat grafting – unpredictable results and potentially low survival rate for transplanted fat tissue.
The concept of boob job by fat injection is not new. Plastic surgeons have been attempting this procedure for decades and still agree that breast implants, be they saline, silicone or cohesive gel, are the safest, most effective way to enlarge natural breasts.
As for breast reconstruction patients, they have had other “natural” methods of rebuilding their breasts available for sometime in the form of complex flap procedures, such as DIEP or TRAM flap reconstruction, that transplant skin, muscle, fat and blood vessels from other body areas into the chest area.
It remains to be seen whether fat grafting breast augmentation and reconstruction using Cytori’s Celution and Celbrush technology can safely and consistently provide beautiful, natural results, but if it proves successful, patients will have even more options to enhance and rebuild their breasts, which can only be good.