A patient asks us regarding her silicone breast implants:
I am 28 years old, presently having silicone implants for nearly 5 years, which I want to “get rid of” and then fill up the gap with my body’s own fat, so that the difference in appearance isn’t too great. The thing I really cannot stand is in particular the foreign body sensation of the silicone breast implants. The feeling of the breast while lying on the back is uncomfortable for me as well.
Silicone Is an Artificial Foreign Body
Although silicone is generally well tolerated, a silicone implant is always a foreign body that irritates a lot of women. In many cases it takes several months before women notice that they are somehow feeling uncomfortable with the silicone implants in their breasts. For example, because they find the breast implants disturbing while sleeping on the back.
Then they are thinking about a removal of the implants, but are hindered by the fear of having breasts that may look even more sagging. Removal of the silicone implants is often resulting in excess skin, which leads to a sagging breast if the place the implant took remains empty. Autologous fat is a natural filling material that can be used to restore natural breast volume.
Natural Breast Reconstruction After Removing Breast Implants
We offer the treatment in two variants, which only differ in one essential step. They are both starting with a gentle manual liposuction (liposculpture) to obtain the needed autologous fat. The liposuction is performed with very thin microcannulas. This approach is very gentle to the tissue and the risk of dent development after the procedure is minimized.
The process differs in the next step: The fat used for a breast augmentation with stem cells (Cell-Assisted Lipotransfer, CAL) is additionally enriched with precious stem cells before it is injected into the breast. Due to stem cell enrichment the durability of the transplanted fat is improved. Thus usually one treatment is sufficient to reach the desired outcome. Results may vary from patient to patient. Please note that in medicine generally no guarantee for a certain treatment result can be given.
In standard autologous fat transfer without stem cell-enrichment (lipofilling) the autologous fat is injected into the breast tissue immediately after its extraction. However, with this technique lower levels of sustainability can usually be achieved compared to the first-mentioned method including stem cell enrichment. For this reason it is recommendable to undergo at least a second round of surgery. Furthermore this variant is more suitable for women who have sufficient excess fat deposits.
In both cases we achieve an augmented breast that looks natural both in rest and in motion and feels like this as well. This is the great key benefit over artificial silicone implants, which can often be recognized even from large distances. The patient can also be spared unpleasant scars and general anesthesia, because breast augmentation with autologous fat and stem cells is performed on an outpatient basis and under local anesthesia. Thus the patient can go back home the same day of surgery and is already able to work the following day.
For all women who are – for whatever reason – dissatisfied with their breasts and at the same time refusing foreign bodies natural methods for breast augmentations provide the ideal way for optimization of their breast shape.
DDr. Heinrich, MD