Jane: Hi. I just have one quick question. I just heard on the news the other day there's a new procedure for breast implants and what they do is take your body fat from your stomach or thighs and implant it in your breast, and this way you're not allergic to any silicone or saline or anything. It's your own body. So how do you fee about this and don't you think that will be something new and pretty well-used in the future, people will start using that as an option?

Dr. Michael Salzhauer: I think that's a great question. I think that that will become a more common procedure. However, you need to understand certain caveats about that. You know, fat transfer, that is taking fat from, let's say, your behind or from your abdomen or anyplace that's unwanted, and moving it to some other part of your body has been around for a long time, at least 15-20 years. Typically, we use it to bulk up the face or the lips or even the hands or even the behind. They call that the Brazilian butt lift. Now, in the last couple of years there have been some brave surgeons in Europe and South America that have taken the fat and put it into the breasts as a replacement for breast implants. Now I say brave surgeons because the reason people haven't been doing it in the past is a fear that as the fat that you inject there dies, it forms calcium nodules, little hard balls that can be confused with breast cancer, and the thinking was that if we put a lot of fat into the breasts and, again, anytime you transfer fat anywhere in the body, it's not permanent. Only about 30% of it survives one year. So 70% of the volume that you put into your breast with that procedure is going to be gone at 1 year, and that 70% that disappears can disappear in the form of these nodules that can be confusing on mammography and can be confused with breast cancer. Now, that was the theory. Now as people start to practice and actually try to do this, there's less of a resistance to trying that. But again, the ideal candidate for somebody who was going to take fat from another part of their body to augment their breasts would have to be somebody that has a) a large volume of fat someplace else, meaning behind or their abdomen, and b) was willing to understand the fact that whatever put in, only 30% of it will last forever or at least last one year. The rest of it will disappear. So again, in theory, I love the idea, I love the concept. In practicality, it might not work as well as we might hope. Now the typical woman who comes in for breast augmentation is not heavy and if you go to my website, you'll see patient after patient of before and after pictures. You'll notice that one of the common themes of girls that get breast augmentation and women that get breast augmentation is that they're obviously flat-chested and women who have less than ample breast tissue usually have less than ample body fat in general. Because as women get heavier, they tend to gain it in their breasts also. So again, you're sort of working across purposes there. The woman that would have enough fat to augment her breasts typically already has big breasts and the woman that would love to have her breasts made bigger with her own fat doesn't have enough fat to do it. It is an exciting trend. It is a great time to be involved in plastic surgery because of all these great new ideas that are coming out and great new procedures that people are trying. That was a really good call, a really timely call.

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