My practice manager and I were noticing that inquiries coming into the Center for Cosmetic Surgery regarding fat injections to the buttocks seem to be increasing. I’ll admit, fat injection sounds really cool: the ability to take your own natural fat and move it to another area of the body seems enticing. Furthermore, the plastic surgery studies largely support this treatment method to enhance the butt…. but, I’m not a supporter. The technique to properly inject fat into a body area is not rocket science. In fact, I did this procedure in the past with relative frequency and it’s easy to perform, but the results just weren’t good. So I stopped. I believe that the fat either gets absorbed by the body so that the benefits are temporary, or it leaves an unattractive lumpy contour. So, on issues like this, where I find myself disagreeing with some of the plastic surgery community, I go back to my common recommendation to prospective patients; search for pictures on the web. If something works well and doesn’t just produce the occasionial good outcome, plastic surgeons will post before and after pictures of the results all over the web in an effort to educate, and yes, sell what they do. And certainly for a procedure that has such huge and growing demand, if it’s successful, there should be ample proof. But I can’t find a wealth of impressive pictures. Case closed. Despite positive claims from many surgeons, and sporadic support in the plastic surgery literature, I do not believe that fat injection to the buttocks is a reliably good operation and do not recommend it to patients.
If anyone out there has had great results from this procedure, please share your experience with me. I’d love to hear from you. But for now, I still have to accept that plastic surgery does not have solution to every concern, no matter how enticing it sounds.
Dr. Steven Vath
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