Mumbai women tap their bottoms for bigger busts

At 32, Priya Sinha, an Andheri-resident, was a happily married woman with two children. She had quit her job as an event manager six years ago to raise her children. But now, with one child aged six and the other five, she wanted to resume working. Everything was more or less the same from the time I quit, she thought, except for one peculiar ‘problem’ she felt self-conscious about: the size and shape of her breasts.

Her breasts had always been small. But breast-feeding two children had taken its toll, and now they also started to sag. Silicone implants were an easy solution, except that she didn’t want implants. Says Dr Lakshyajit Dhami, her cosmetic surgeon, “Sinha wanted better-looking breasts, without which, she felt, her confidence at the workplace would sag. But she did not want any foreign object in her body.”

Sinha was a slightly-built woman, but she was blessed with a substantial bottom and sizeable hips. So Dr Dhami had her undergo a liposuction surgery, where 525cc of fat was removed from her hips. The same fat was then injected into her breasts: 260cc in her left breast and 265cc in her right. Dr Dhami had first used fat from the patient’s body for breast augmentation seven years ago, in about three cases, with poor results. Recalling the cases, he says, “Very little fat survived. Only about 65 per cent did, in all three cases.” Unhappy with the results, all three patients went for silicone implants.

But now, this procedure is making a comeback, even though silicone implants still remain the preferred choice for enhancements. In the last two years, Dr Dhami has used fat in about 15 cases, compared to the 80-90 cases where he used silicone implants.
The difference is that earlier, doctors would inject fat into the breast, not putting much thought into which part of the breast was receiving the fat. But now the technique is more advanced, asserts Dr Varun Dixit of Criticare Multispeciality Hospital.

“Now we inject the fat at two layers. One is directly between the breast tissue and the pectoral muscle, and the other is at the fatty tissue located just a layer behind the skin of the breast,” says Dr Dixit, explaining how injecting fat into these parts ensures better retention of it. Another benefit of this method is that there is better distribution of fat and lesser chances of lumps that used to plague this procedure earlier.

There are also other advantages of using fat for enhancements. Dr Bimal Mody, a cosmetic surgeon who has performed 25 breast enhancement surgeries using fat, says many of his patients opt for fat because they don’t want fake or unnaturally hard breasts. It is also preferred by patients who fear ruptures and leaks of silicone implants. The surgery, which involves only needles, also avoids the scarring caused when silicone implants are used.

But one limitation is that fat cannot give you a humungous enhancement. “You can’t go from size A size to size C size using fat. Only silicone implants can do that,” says Dr Dixit, who at most injects 125 cc of fat into one breast in one sitting. “Anything more and there are chances of lump formation and a lot of it not surviving.” However, there is a bright side to this too. Anybody who wants a breast enhancement of less than 120 cc can opt for fat, as the smallest silicon implants available in India are of 120 cc.

Thus, fat is ideal for people who do not want drastic increases in breast size, or for those who need corrections after any kind of surgery on the breast. Menaka Doshi, a college student of 18, had developed a breast fibroid. A surgery to remove it left a large dent in the upper part of her right breast. Since no implants are available for such dents, Dr Dixit injected 50 cc of fat from her hips to fill the dent. Today, both her breasts look the same size.

Using fat is also sometimes cheaper. The entire procedure of breast augmentation using silicone implants, including the price of the implants (Rs30,000 per pair), is between Rs90,000 and Rs1.2 lakh, while enhancement using fat costs between Rs50,000 to Rs60,000 per sitting. However, if the patient goes for more sittings to further increase the size, the costs go up to roughly the same as for a silicon procedure, and sometimes higher.
Since people have the ability (and often the inclination) to lose weight, can breasts that were made bigger using fat, turn smaller when the person loses weight? “It is very much possible, but none of my patients have lost so much weight,” says Dr Dhami. Yet, not all of the fat survives. Even today, with improved procedures, at least 20 to 30 per cent of the fat disappears in the first two months.

As for Sinha, Dr Dhami recalls her gushing when she visited him nine months later, “My breasts are perfect. I feel young all over again.”
(Names of patients changed on request).