Breast Augmentation

Breast augmentation denotes the breast implant and fat-graft mammoplasty procedures for correcting the defects, and for enhancing the size, form, and feel of a woman’s breasts. The surgical implantation approach effects global breast augmentation using either a saline-filled or a silicone-filled prosthetic breast; and it might also consist of corrections effected with transplanted skin flaps. The fat-transfer approach effects the augmentation, and corrects the contour defects of the breast hemisphere with grafts of autologous adipocyte fat tissue. Each augmentation approach corrects post–mastectomy defects in a breast reconstruction procedure; congenital defects and congenital abnormalities of the chest wall; and aesthetically enhances the natural size, look, and feel of the bust.

In breast reconstruction practice, the tissue expander is a temporary breast-implant device used to prepare the implant-pocket (recipient site), as part of a staged reconstruction mammoplasty procedure. In non-implant breast augmentation practice, some fat-graft injection approaches feature tissue engineering, which is the pre-operative external tissue expansion of the recipient site. In non-surgical practice, the corrective approaches might consist either of an externally-applied vacuum device, which will expand the tissues of the recipient site, or of oral medications; yet, in most instances, the medium-volume, fat-graft augmentation of the breast is limited to one brassière cup-size, or less.