Lately I’ve been seeing more press over the opportunities overseas researchers are promoting for more “natural” breast augmentations that would utilize stem cells from a patient’s own fat. As a board certified surgeon performing plastic surgery in the Inland Empire and San Gabriel Valley, I am always striving for less invasive methods with more natural results. At the same time, in the interests of safety, I am advising my patients to be aware that there are good reasons not to undergo this kind of procedure quite yet.

What Happens in A Stem-Cell Breast Augmentation?

The procedure, as performed in Europe and Japan, and by a few experimental U.S. surgeons, involves removing excess fat from stem-cell rich areas of the body such as the buttocks or thighs, purifying it to increase the ratio of stem cells to fat, and re-injecting it into the breasts.

Surgeons have been attempting autologous-fat breast augmentations since the beginning of cosmetic surgery, but these efforts usually failed because the fat would not remain healthy. Large areas of injected fat tend to die and harden into lumps, or be unevenly reabsorbed by the body. Sometimes, the additional pressure on nerve tissues also causes loss of sensation.

By involving stem cells in the procedure, surgeons hope primarily to prevent those kinds of side effects by allowing the stem cells to work with the body to nourish and maintain the injected fat.

Augmentation using autologous fat transfer (removing fat from one area of the body to fill out another) makes sense on a theoretical level to many patients because of its apparent advantages over silicone or saline implants:

• Natural rather than synthetic materials
• Injections of fat cells will likely involve less scarring than many conventional augmentation methods
• As a less invasive procedure, it might require only local anesthesia

What many patients do not realize, though, is that this new iteration of the procedure hasn’t yet developed far enough to correct some of the problems that have always made it a problematic procedure. Part of the confusion arises from the fact that fat transfer on a much smaller scale is an increasingly safe option many Riverside, California plastic surgeons use to fill and reinforce facial tissues. However, breast augmentation differs in important ways.

Jumping the Gun

Stem-cell breast augmentation, unlike the smaller-scale autologous fat transfer to the lips or cheeks has no track record eliminating these risks or addressing the vast number of patient-specific variables such as circulatory health and blood chemistry that impact how the body will react to such a procedure.

When I perform breast augmentation for Riverside patients, I definitely require that kind of information, because I focus on achieving reliably positive and healthy results. Plastic surgeons are always striving for a more natural look, but at this stage, the underlying risks of the method and the lack of dependable clinical studies leave me hoping most patients will make the wiser choice.

In my opinion, patients need to choose an approach that has proven safe and effective, which is breast augmentation using implants. The alternative is to wait some years until technology and research can back up the claims and ensure high levels of safety.