Natural Looking Breast Reconstruction
Without Implants
Slim Image Aesthetics is the leader in the midwest in no implant, fat transfer breast augmentation and post-mastectomy & lumpectomy breast reconstruction. We offer a minimally invasive, patient friendly alternative, and with our breakthrough procedure, patients keep most of the feeling in their new breasts.
If you are in need of breast reconstruction due to breast cancer, we are here to make your healing journey easier. We are the only doctors in the Midwest who can build an entire breast using your own fat without having to undergo another major surgery such as flaps and implant breast reconstruction procedures.
Whether you had a “simple” or “total” mastectomy, radical mastectomy or partial mastectomy, you are probably a good candidate for our breakthrough natural breast reconstruction technique.? And we certainly understand that after having mastectomy or lumpectomy, the last thing you want is yet another major surgery. As compared to the traditional surgical methods, Breast Reconstruction with Fat involves No incisions, No new scars, No foreign objects, and No general anesthesia. Besides, fat grafting recreates a natural feeling breast with the additional benefit of water assisted body contouring to your mid-section.
The Breast Reconstruction Procedure With Fat Transfer
First, the patient will wear an external expander device called a Brava bra for 4 to 6 weeks prior to the first fat grafting session. Brava is a comfortable, soft, gel-like bra that creates a gentle vacumn to encourage new tissue growth. Not only does Brava expand the skin from the outside, it also has the effect of regenerating an edema-like breast mound through the expansion of tissue and nerves. Brava also increases the blood flow to the mastectomy scar and improves the healing process of the tissue damaged by radiation. This creates an adequate vascular matrix into which the transferred fat is later injected.
After the Brava has been worn for a few weeks, the patient will come into the office for the fat transfer procedure. The patient's body fat is removed from one area of the body and meticulously injected back as hundreds of tiny individual droplets at the breast site that has been enlarged by the Brava expansion. The fat graft is harvested using Body-Jet, a device that uses pulses of water to gentle remove intact fat cells. The fat graft is harvested from the patient’s stomach, thighs, hips or wherever there is fat to spare, an incidental but appreciated side benefit to the total procedure.
This Body-Jet liposuction method of fat harvesting is by far superior to other methods because it yields more viable fat cells. The transferred fat survives within the vascular matrix of tissue and the breast mound is restored “naturally” over the following three months. The resulting new breast mound looks like the patient’s very own but contains no breast tissue. It is made only of transferred fat,and best of all the breast mound has sensation, and feels and looks normal.
Finally, if the patient desires a further breast augmentation it is easily done with another Fat Transfer session a couple of months later.
Procedure Benefits
Until recently the only breast reconstruction options post-mastectomy were:
- Breast Implants, which involves the placement of a foreign material such as Silicone or Saline under the muscle and leads to an artificial looking breast mound. A breast implant stretches out the breast tissue in front of the implant (A two dimensional flattening stretch that is less desirable than the 3D volume expansion of the BRAVA)
- TRAM flap surgery, which involves taking a piece of muscle and tissue from the back or the abdomen and using it to rebuild a breast mound. The surgery is extensive, it requires major incisions, a prolonged recovery and the result is like a patch work that still requires an implant.
- DIEP flap surgery, which involves the removal of abdominal fat and skin. This procedure is very lengthy and it is imperative that the surgery be done by a breast specialist who performs lots of these on a routine basis because the morbidity, complications and failure rates are very high. Unfortunately, even the best results look and feel like patch work.
- All of the above breast reconstruction alternatives involve major surgery, general anesthesia, muscle trauma, new scars and prolonged recovery.
Breast reconstruction with fat transfer is an innovative procedure that allows reconstruction of an entire breast from fat with NO foreign material, NO general anesthesia, NO new scars, and NO morbidity or complications like the traditional breast reconstruction procedures.
Additionally, breasts reconstructed with fat look natural, feel like your own and have sensation. Furthermore, our patients are up and back to their normal life within 3 days.