For all the women in the world who undergo breast augmentation to enhance their figure, there are more who aren’t happy with their bust who do not. After all, breast implants require invasive surgery, and that carries with it certain risks. But what if there was another way? A way that used your own unwanted body fat?

One plastic surgeon may have found a way to do just that. ASPS member Roger K. Khouri, MD, has come up with a new method of using fat transfer to augment breasts without the use of implants and without any invasive surgery.

Fat transfer is not a new idea in the world of breast enhancement. However, fat cell necrosis (cell death) has always been an issue with the procedure. On average, only 55 per cent of fat cells survived the procedure.

However, Dr. Khouri’s method involves a bra-like device of his own creation, called Brava®. Worn for a few weeks prior to the fat transfer procedure, the Brava uses a slight vacuum to “pre-expand” the breasts, giving the fat tissue space to be injected.  According to a report Dr. Khouri lead authored, the rate of cell survival was 80 per cent after undergoing pre-expansion, as opposed to 55 per cent without pre-expansion.

This has the potential to change the face of the breast enhancement industry as we know it. Breast augmentation could become an outpatient procedure, without any sort of incision. According to Dr. Khouri’s report, women can look forward to their breast sizes being as much as doubled in an afternoon.

While promising, the procedure is still in the developmental stage, and is not likely to replace the breast implant in the very near future, but Dr. Khouri and his researchers believe their study “establishes a benchmark and a platform for further potential improvements.”

• Breast Augmentation with Dr. Chris Hess

We plastic surgeons care very much about the results and experiences of our patients, so when I began using anonymous surveys to ask our patients how they felt about their experience, both after consultation and surgery, it was eye-opening.

Our colleague Marie Olesen, who runs a plastic surgery practice in La Jolla, California, recently wrote about the choice plastic surgeons have to view patient reviews either as a threat or an opportunity.

We take the “opportunity” postion, rather than the “threat.” When reviews are seen as an opportunity for a plastic surgeon to take even better care of patients, everybody wins. This is the choice we have made here at Hess Plastic Surgery, and we share it all in the open without removing the reviews that may not be the best, because this is where we’ve had a chance to do even better in the future.

• Read reviews of Dr. Chris Hess
• Visit RealPatientRatings.com

The economy is on a slow-but-steady rise, and consumer confidence starting to return. As a result, cosmetic procedures have enjoyed their second year of growth in a row.

According to a report issued by the American Plastic Surgery Society, surgeons across the country performed 13.8 million procedures in 2011. This is a 5 percent increase from 2010, which itself was a year of growth.

“Consumer confidence was up, auto sales rose 10 percent, so it is not surprising that we would also see increased demand for plastic surgery procedures,” said ASPS President Malcolm Z. Roth.

The report by the ASPS breaks down the numbers further, providing insight into prevalent trends in the industry.

“We are seeing notable increases in surgical procedures, such as facelifts, that reflect the demands of an aging boomer population,” said Dr. Roth. Chin augmentation, a popular procedure among men, nearly doubled, and lip augmentations went up by nearly 50 percent. However, the real action is in minimally-invasive procedures, such as laser hair removals (up 15 percent) and microdermabrasion (up 9 percent), with the number of procedures in the millions.

While consumer confidence goes a long way, Dr. Roth credits a lot of hard work from the industry in part for the promising trend.

“While insurance coverage for breast reconstruction is mandated by law, continued strides to provide coverage for other reconstructive procedures has contributed, in part, to the sizable gain that we are seeing with these procedures.”

For more information, read this year’s study, as well as the 2010 and 2009 studies.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill to phase out the six percent tax on cosmetic procedures in three stages.

The tax will be reduced to four percent this year, down to two percent next July, and finally eliminated altogether by July 2014.

Initially conceived as a way to generate additional revenue for the state, the legislation has come under fire by the New Jersey Society of Plastic Surgeons (NJSPS) and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) for being counterintuitive and costing more money than it brings in.

The tax adds a little over $10 million a year in revenue, but that number falls far short of the numbers legislators expected to rake in.

Furthermore, the tax loses money by encouraging what Allergan CEO David Pyott calls “surgical flight.” Potential patients chose to travel to neighbouring states for surgery to avoid taxes, and some practitioners followed suit and relocated their practices out of state. Independent reports found that between 2005 and 2008, for every dollar made from taxes, three were lost.

The bill was almost rescinded in 2006, but then-Governor Jon Corzine vetoed the legislation.

The president of the NJSPS, Dr. Chris Godek, is pleased that the tax is finally being abolished. “We’re happy to finally have erased a tax that was unfair on several different levels – including bias against women – and which caused major unforeseen problems, such as the flight of residents across state borders for procedures,” says Dr. Godek.

According to Plastic Surgery Portal, a procedure like breast augmentation costs an average of US$4000.

At the current rate of six percent, an extra US $240 is added to that cost in NJ. Under this new legislation, that number will drop to US $160, and then US $80, before it is finally waved entirely. The bill also applies to dermatological and ophthalmological procedures, in a time of financial difficulty for many Americans.

CoolSculpting was recently shown on Fox News NY. The February 2012 segment features Montclair, New Jersey plastic surgeon Dr. Barry DiBernardo, who explains how CoolSculpting was discovered (through kids and popsicles) and how the ideal CoolSculpting candidate is in good shape with some trouble spots.

Learn more about CoolSculpting by ZELTIQ

Fortunately, with a few modifications to your routine, you can minimize the harsh effects of winter weather and keep your skin as healthy as it can be.

1. Protect Your Skin’s Natural Oils

Winter air already contains less moisture than other seasons, so it’s important to protect your skin’s natural oils. Avoid hot showers and body soaps that contain detergents. Hot water can further dehydrate your skin, and body soaps that contain detergents can diminish protective skin oils.

2. Hydrate Properly

Hydration is important to the health of your skin year round, but it’s also essential that you moisturize the outer layer of your skin so that you can retain moisture underneath the skin’s outer layer.

People shouldn’t assume that drinking excess fluids will help dry skin, according to Dr. Alicia Zalka, associate clinical professor of dermatology at Yale. If your skin is already very dry, these extra liquids may just evaporate instead of retaining moisture within the skin.

To properly hydrate, remember to moderate your consumption of alcohol or caffeinated beverages. Alcoholic drinks as well as caffeinated beverages can affect your skin and body more during harsh, dry winter months.

3. Reassess Your Skin Care Regimen

Not all skin care products are designed to be used year round. Cleansers and exfoliators for example, should be milder in the winter than in the summer, while moisturizer should be a richer to protect your skin during winter weather. Also, don’t forget that daily sunblock application is just as important in the winter as it is in the summer.

“The war led surgeons to attempt ground-breaking procedures, which paved the way for modern plastic surgery,” said Dr. Andrew Bamji, former curator of the Gillies archive.

Named after plastic surgery pioneer Sir Harold Gillies, the archives include medical documentation, paintings, plastic casts, instruments and more.

The artifacts tell a story about war injuries and the surgical techniques that were developed to treat them.

You can read more about Dr. Gillies’ work on Wikipedia:

“The Queen’s Hospital opened in June 1917 and with its convalescent units provided over 1,000 beds. There Gillies and his colleagues developed many techniques of plastic surgery; more than 11,000 operations were performed on over 5,000 men (mostly soldiers with facial injuries, usually from gunshot wounds).”

Photo: Sir Harold Gillies by Simon Harriyott, on Flickr

Through candid interviews, the film documents the experiences of models from the 70s and 80s.

“The divergent attitudes among the women about everything from the business of modeling, to aging and plastic surgery, are fascinating and priceless. ”

- The Sundance Film Guide

An excerpt from the film trailer asks Carmen Dell’Orifice: “What is it about plastic surgery and facelifts – what is your sense of that whole world?”

She says “Well, if you had the ceiling falling down in your living room,would you not go an have a repair?”

About Face has several screenings at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, January 19 – 29 in Park City, Utah.

The breast implants are said to have a very high failure rate and a non-medical type of silicone gel. France is now encouraging women with these implants to have them removed.

PIP silicone gel-filled implants have never been approved for use in the United States. The only way an American patient would have these implants is if she had undergone breast surgery in another country.

ASPS Monitoring the Situation

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), working with the French Society of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, is monitoring the recent developments on PIP silicone gel breast implants.

The ASPS issued a statement to its members practicing outside the United States:

“We believe that while the current focus of attention is in France, approximately 80 percent of PIP implants were exported to other countries including the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela. There are also reports that implants under the brand name “M,” distributed by a Dutch company in Germany – and possibly elsewhere in Europe – may also be PIP implants that were rebranded as “M” implants.”

According to Reuters, Italy is working with cosmetic surgery clinics to compile a list of women who received the implants. Meanwhile, officials in Brazil and Britain are urging women to check in with their surgeons. The French government is recommending and offering to pay for explantation surgery – if the original surgery was for breast reconstruction.

Allergan Inc, American Breast Implant Maker Assures Quality of Their Implants

In response to the French situation, Allergan issued a lengthy press release to reassure surgeons and patients about the quality of their breast implants. Allergan’s products are marketed under the names Natrelle, McGhan and CUI. None of these implants are included in the French investigation.

“The health authorities are specifically concerned about breast implants made by the company called Poly Implant Prosthese (PIP),” states the Allergan Press Release. The release also describes the extensive checks that are in place to ensure quality of their implants. “Allergan maintains rigorous clinical development processes, extensive manufacturing and quality assurance testing, as well as an industry-leading post-marketing surveillance program, to ensure the highest quality and safety of its breast implants that patients and surgeons can rely on.”

AP Video: France Calls for Breast Implant Removal

The following video from Associated Press briefly explains the situation.