Implant removal following fat grafting to bilateral breasts to correct breast deformity following failed breast implant augmentation performed by a prior surgeon.
Fat transfer following implant removal is now a routine procedure for buttock enhancement patients. Many patients that had previous buttock implants or breast implants inserted may have not known about fat grafting techniques that would provide them with a natural augmentation. Other patients have just grown to dislike their implants. This growing dislike for both buttock and breast implants has become more prevalent over recent years.
Dislike for implant removal has arisen due to a high incidence of side effects and complications. For beginners, there is a high incidence of extrusion. This is because the intramuscular pocket where the implant is placed in a tight pocket; to further complicate matters, sitting on the implant additionally places an abnormal amount of pressure on the implant. In fact, some patients observe the pressure on a sensory nerve called sciatica that radiates down their legs.
Some studies have quoted a 20 % extrusion rate! There is also a higher incidence of infection due to the fact that the implant placement is near your anal canal and vulnerable to contamination.
Interestingly, the more common complaint that I have observed over the last 17 years of implanting buttock implants is the gradual development of implant malposition.
This is because, with time and level of activity, the pressures placed on the implant end up stretching out the implant pocket. Inevitably, the pocket becomes too large for the implant which then results in the implant dropping or even flipping. These patients will show up to your office years to a decade following buttock implant augmentation desiring fat transfer following implant removal.
Dislike for breast implants has become even more recently popularized by Breast Implant Illness Syndrome. Patients with breast implants across the United States have been commiserating around nonspecific symptoms that they attribute to the silicone in their implants. Symptoms have ranged from nonspecific aches and pains not isolated to the breast but spreading across their whole body and joints.
They are also showing a proclivity to auto-immune related illnesses that they fear are related to immune cell reaction to silicone molecules. Although Breast Implant Illness has not been scientifically proven, it has become undeniably very concerning. As such, we are routinely asked today to perform fat transfer following implant removal.
The patient is seen here presented with a case of breast deformities following a breast implant augmentation performed by a prior surgeon. The patient presented with capsular contracture after implant placement, so implants were removed. When implants are removed, and as can be seen here, there is a maximum collapse of breast tissues right under the areola.
The divots on the breasts demonstrate this collapse of tissue. Fat transfer following implant removal allowed board-certified plastic surgeon, Our Surgical Team, to correct the breast deformity, eliminating divots of the periareolar area, and providing the patients with symmetrical, aesthetic breasts with some volume to correct the collapse.
If you have had capsular contracture, have breast implant illness, or are concerned with your breast implants, and you do not wish to have your implants replaced, then fat transfer following implant removal can likely be a recommended operation to you.
If you are interested in a fat transfer following implant removal, please contact our office, Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Institute, in Newport Beach, CA at (949) 506-2026; we offer complimentary virtual and in-person consultations.
