Am I A Good Candidate For Hip Implants?

Q: Dr. Eppley, Am I a good candidate for hip implants?

A: 1) If you have adequate fat to harvest (and you do) you always try fat injections first. While fat retention in the hips is not known to be great you always try it first and see how much is retained. Even if the fat augmentation result is inadequate it prepares the hips better for implants…which needs all the subcutaneous fat thickness around them you can get.

2) The risk of complications in hip implants improves when one doesn’t get too ‘greedy’ in size and thickness…which I have illustrated in the attachments.The question thus is not whether one can have hip implants but whether the size that lowers the risk of complications is aesthetically acceptable.

Dr. Barry Eppley

World-Renowned Plastic Surgeon