Illustration from MSNBC.comIt's a great idea, and not a new one, as the piece discusses. Plastic surgeons have been doing this sort of thing - fat grafting - for decades. Unfortunately, not all of the transferred fat stays where you put it; fat cells are fairly finicky creatures, and reports of 50% volume loss over time aren't unusual. Plus, there is the added risk of confounding cancer detection when fat cells (which often calcify) are moved to the breast (where calcifications are warning signs on mammograms).
The twists that the article reveals are two: MRIs these days are better at sussing out true malignancies from benign calcifications; and you can apparently keep transplanted fat cells happier with giant suction cups on your breast.
Anyone remember seeing ads for the Brava device in the back pages of Glamour or Cosmo? It was basically two giant suction cups, one for each breast, that promised to increase your size by a cup or two. The catch? Other than two giant suction cups - you had to wear the vacuum assisted bra all the time.
So despite decent results, the Brava device never took off - women just couldn't commit to the bulk of the machine. Reenter Dr. Khouri, the inventor of Brava, who has found a new application for the unloved device. A recently published small study of his reveals that using Brava gives patients longer lasting, more predictable breast augmentation with fat grafting.
Dr. Khouri's disclosures and all, you still have to examine these results with an eyebrow raised. I'll be curious to see how the patients do in other plastic surgeons' hands, and whether or not women will be ready to commit to giant suction cups on their breasts this time around.
The twists that the article reveals are two: MRIs these days are better at sussing out true malignancies from benign calcifications; and you can apparently keep transplanted fat cells happier with giant suction cups on your breast.
Anyone remember seeing ads for the Brava device in the back pages of Glamour or Cosmo? It was basically two giant suction cups, one for each breast, that promised to increase your size by a cup or two. The catch? Other than two giant suction cups - you had to wear the vacuum assisted bra all the time.
So despite decent results, the Brava device never took off - women just couldn't commit to the bulk of the machine. Reenter Dr. Khouri, the inventor of Brava, who has found a new application for the unloved device. A recently published small study of his reveals that using Brava gives patients longer lasting, more predictable breast augmentation with fat grafting.
Dr. Khouri's disclosures and all, you still have to examine these results with an eyebrow raised. I'll be curious to see how the patients do in other plastic surgeons' hands, and whether or not women will be ready to commit to giant suction cups on their breasts this time around.
