Will Iliac Crest Implants Make My Hips Look Top Heavy?

Q: Dr. Eppley, Was wondering about the “Hip Widening By Iliac Crest Bone Implant Augmentation” procedure. I’ve been following the procedures approval process in South Korea for a few years now and was wondering how you feel about the results of your patients that you’ve performed this procedure on.

My worry is that it would make my hips “top-heavy” so to speak, by make the top part of the hips wide without also widening the bottom part.

Was wondering your thoughts on that, especially for a patient that is transgender like myself.

Thank you!

A:The key to iliac crest implants, or any aesthetic surgery, is to determine BEFORE surgery what the effects they may create and see if it provides improvements, creates an unappealing change or just creates another problem. There is a fine line between augmenting the outer pelvic rim (the very top of the hip region) and the more well known soft tissue hip region below it. This is why computer imaging always needs to be done on each patient looking at augmentation of the iliac crest region alone, augmentation of the hips below or a combination of both. This is simple enough to do using front and back pictures of the torso.