Am I A Good Candidate For Fat Injection Breast Augmentation?

Q: Dr. Eppley, I am interested in fat injection breast augmentation. Attached are a few photos that I took this morning. As for the breasts I do not want large breasts, I just want to fill out the skin that I have. You can see in my side profile that the top half is pretty flat and empty. i like the look and feel of natural breasts which is why I am more interested in fat transfer but I am not completely opposed to a small implant if we can keep them natural looking. I do not like the look of my indentions in my hips. I have had them for as long as I can remember, no matter how small I was. I do like the curvature of my body in my waist so I would like to have liposuction of my tummy and use the fat to fill in my hips so that I have a smooth curve. In the last photo you can see that I have a small overhang of belly skin, I do not want a tummy tuck because I do not want to be left with a large scar. I have heard of SkinTite being used with liposuction to help reduce this and wanted to know if you offer that or have any other suggestions. 

A: Thank you for sending your pictures to which I can say the following:

1) While you do have some fat to harvest any amount of fat injected into your breasts is not going to round them out or provide the upper pole fullness you lack. Fat works best in breasts that have a good skin sleeve/tightness. It doesn’t have the stiffness or push, no matter what the volume injected is, to have an expansive effect in the breast with loose skin. Only an implant can provide the push needed to have that effect.

2) Thus fat harvested would be better used for the hips even though that is a notoriously poor area for injected fat survival. But enough volume injected can overcome much of that anatomic unfavorability.

2) While you can have liposuction, which will have some reductive/flattening effect on your stomach, there is no benefit to the use of SkinTite afterwards as the ability to tighten skin that has stretch marks is negligible. You have to rely on whatever natural skin elasticity remains in which yours is limited.

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana