Sydney Coleman Shows Longevity of Breast Fat Grafting
Dr. Sydney Coleman Began Grafting Fat to the Breast 17 Years Ago
& Demonstrates Long-Lasting Natural Results
Dr. Sydney Coleman, known as the pioneer of fat grafting, has been placing autologous (one’s own) fat into the breasts since 1995 – much longer than any other practicing plastic surgeon. He had amazing success with using the Coleman fat grafting technique to the breast in his earliest patients. This lead him to start using fat not only to enlarge breasts or make one side match the other, but also to cover and soften implants, fill in the “dents” left from lumpectomy, correct tuberous breasts (a congenital deformity) and enhance primary reconstructions after mastectomy. He observed that fat also helped repair radiation and solar (sun) damage, and can often help to soften retracted scarring, chronic post-mastectomy pain, and restore sensitivity to the breast. Dr. Coleman published his amazing results in 2007 with his associate, Alesia Saboeiro. This sparked a revolution in plastic surgery, and scientific studies worldwide are now trying to explain these amazing results.
Below, on the left is a patient with tuberous breasts before fat grafting surgery. On the right is the same patient 14years after the last of two fat grafting procedures to her breasts. Note the dramatic enlargement of the lower part of her breasts, and the completely natural and beautiful appearance 14 years later. Even with such dramatic changes, there are no telltale signs of having had a breast procedure. Incisions for passage of the cannula to place the fat are tiny, and placed in the fold under the breast and in the border of the areola; the scars are often all but invisible.
Tuberous Breast Correction 12 years after last fat grafting
- Tuberous Brest Side View with 12 year followup
–Written by the Staff at TriBeCa Plastic Surgery
Blog posts on tuberous breasts.
What is a Tuberous Breast?
How Can We Correct a Tuberous Breast?
Remarkable case of tubular breast correction with Coleman fat grafting
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON BREAST FAT GRAFTING, PLEASE GO TO THE LIPOSTRUCTURE WEBSITE.
Check out these links for more information on fat grafting to the breasts:
New York Times Reports on Fat Grafting to the Breast
Combining the BRAVA system with Fat Grafting to the Breast
Fat Grafting to solve problems with Breast Implants
Safety concerns with fat grafting to the breast
The American Society of Plastic Surgery’s Position of Fat Grafting to the Breast
Dr. Sydney Coleman demonstrates Breast Reconstruction with LipoStructure on The Doctors
Coleman lectures on fat grafting for breast reconstruction at the American College of Surgeons
Breast Augmentation Via Fat Grafting From “Plastic Surgery Practice”
Breast Implant Problems Solved with Coleman Fat Grafting
Fat Grafting to the Breast Revisited: Safety and Efficacy. Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. 119(3):775-785, March 2007. Coleman, Sydney R. M.D.; Saboeiro, Alesia P. M.D.
Catherine Saint Louis wrote an article in the Style Section of the New York Times on fat grafting to the breasts on. Please click on this the following URL to take you to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/fashion/03skin.html?_r=1&ref=fashion
Ms. Saint Louis did a great deal of research and spoke to me for close to two hours over three different conversations. She also interviewed one of my patients who has an eleven year follow-up (last paragraph of the article).
© Coleman 2012
Treatment of Biceps Muscle Tear with Coleman Fat Grafting
Most often, people tear their biceps from a traumatic fall, during heavy weightlifting, or during sporting activities. Long-term impairment can include a significant decrease in strength when flexing the shoulder and elbow. It can also influence grip strength and certain movements of the forearm. Dr. Sydney Coleman has been treating biceps muscle tears for twenty years. Treatment with Coleman fat grafting not only restores the form of a biceps but also can help restore some strength.
The above patient experienced a right biceps tear four years ago. He was curling a free-weight when he had a pain in his biceps and noticed “bubbling” of his biceps. He had no treatment of the tear, and it gradually atrophied to leave a deformity (left photo above). One year after the second placement of structural fat into the biceps (right photo above and below), the patient returns delighted not only because of the normal appearance, but also because he feels that his strength has returned to the involved biceps.
The return of strength to the biceps is a remarkable phenomenon that is probably related to the repair possible with grafted fat. This is an area of regenerative medicine deserving the utmost attention and research. Dr. Coleman has also used Coleman fat grafts in pectoralis muscles, forearms, calves, and thighs.
–Written by the Staff at TriBeCa Plastic Surgery
For more information please refer to earlier posts:
Male Chest Pectoral Muscle Enhancement with Fat Grafting
Size of the Forearms Enhanced by Coleman Fat Grafting
Male Buttock Augmentation with Coleman Fat Grafts
Dr. Sydney Coleman Introduces Improvements to Fat Grafting
Sydney Coleman Interviewed for Stem Cell Facelift Using Structural Fat Grafting
The treatment of face and neck scars with structural fat grafting
Further reading:
Read about Dr. Coleman’s development of these special procedures in Cosmetic Surgery Times.
Dr. Coleman of New York featured in an Article in The Times Magazine
Vogue Magazine Explains Coleman Fat Grafting
Fat Injection: From Filling to Regeneration
In Dr. Coleman’s book Structural Fat Grafting
Dr. Coleman’s book Fat Injection: From Filling to Regeneration
NY Times shows photos of progressive improvement in skin quality with Coleman Fat Grafting
© Coleman 2012
Dr. Coleman of New York featured in an Article in The Times Magazine
An excerpt of the article written by Hermione Hoby for the London Times Magazine follows:
“The Surgeon Who Injects Women with Fat
Well, they do ask him to… Just when we’ve got used to fillers for the face, along comes a remarkable body resculpting technique”
Dr. Sydney Coleman holding a fat grafting cannula in his operating theater surrounded by his nurse, physician's assistant, and centrifuge Photo by Mike McGregor
“It is the last place in the world you’d expect to hear someone praising fat. But, in a chic Manhattan plastic-surgery clinic populated by impossibly lean women, Dr Sydney Coleman is doing just that, while explaining a new technique with radical implications for cosmetic and reconstructive work.
LipoStructure, or lipomodelling as it’s also known, involves taking a patient’s own body fat and reinjecting it to sculpt, fill, correct and enhance other areas. We may have got used to the idea of injectable fillers for the face; now it’s body recontouring that’s the growth industry. And, for more and more surgeons, fat is the tool of choice. In the right hands, the results are extraordinary: it can fill scars and hollows, smooth creases, retouch cellulite dimples, as well as plump and sculpt breasts and bottoms.
One of the most popular procedures Dr Coleman offers is taking fat from the abdomen and reinjecting it into the breasts, which is, as one surgeon puts it, “the answer to a maiden’s prayer” – weight loss, waist definition and breast enhancement all in one procedure.
But aren’t people squeamish about using their own fat? “They love it,” Dr Coleman says, with a big smile. “The abdomen and love handles are always my first choice because that makes the woman thinner.” Fat can, of course, be taken from anywhere it’s not wanted on the body and, as Dr Coleman says, “There’s no blood and no cuts. There are just these little puncture sites.”
Coleman first started investigating fat-grafting in the late Eighties when, he explains, “I’d go to a cocktail party and women would pull me aside and complain about their thighs and abdomens after liposuction. So that was the original motivation – to help these women who were coming to me saying, ‘What am I supposed to do now?’?”
Back when liposuction was a new procedure, many surgeons would remove too much fat from thighs, leaving them hollowed and irregular, he says. “I visited people in California and Virginia and spoke to people in France who were doing fat-grafting for the correction of liposuction deformities, but they’d never had good experiences. So I looked at what they were doing and tried to do it a little differently. I tried to bring it down to more basic principles.”
The principles may be basic, but the work is also extremely precise. Coleman’s technique involves harvesting fat very gently through low-vacuum cannulas before using a centrifuge to separate the oil and water. (Traditional liposuction techniques, which involve exerting a lot of negative pressure, can harm the fat and increase the chances of it dying once it’s been grafted, meaning it forms hard lumps.) The treated fat is then reinjected, one droplet at a time, in a lattice formation. It’s a delicate and painstaking process, with no room for error.
The surgery’s “two-for-one” aspect is not its only appeal. Unlike most conventional breast augmentation surgery, there is no scarring. There are also none of the aesthetic and practical problems that come with implants, and fat-grafting affords the surgeon more control – and room for artistry. “With silicone, you’ve got a bag and you make a hole and stuff it in the hole,” says Dr Coleman. “It’s a prefabricated volume. But with fat-grafting, you have to completely visualise everything in three dimensions. You can really shape the breast and improve projection and I’m able to go anywhere – to make cleavage, to feather into the side.” Some of the most impressive before-and-after pictures he shows involve subtle but radical changes to breast shape: an obvious implant, for example, is edged with fat and instantly becomes natural-looking.
Linda Francipane, a 44-year-old hairdresser from Queens, was an early patient of Dr Coleman’s and underwent breast augmentation surgery having spent “many, many months” researching her options. This included speaking to a lot of strippers about their implants. “I’d say 40 to 50 per cent had some kind of issue with them – whether they leaked, or the look, or the feel,” she says.
She was nonetheless determined to do something about her flat chest. “You’d be out clubbing,” she says, “and all the hot girls had tremendous boobs and I really had nothing, like nothing. This was the time when everybody was getting implants and I was like a little boy. I just wanted to get in the game.”
When a friend told her about Dr Coleman’s technique, “It seemed like a fabulous alternative to putting something foreign in my body.” She went from “below an A” to a 36C and says, “The way he did them, you can’t tell. It’s terrific. It changed my life.” She says she’s still receiving compliments.
Tal, a 36-year-old from Portland, Oregon, is another of Dr Coleman’s patients. She had implants when she was 19 but was so dissatisfied, she had them removed after just nine months. “I couldn’t breathe properly. It was just a very foreign feeling,” she explains.
As soon as she heard about breast augmentation by fat-grafting, she booked a consultation with Dr Coleman. “I thought nothing could be worse than what I had, so, even if he messed up, it would still be better. I had nerve damage from the breast implants, and stretch marks, and some scarring from under the nipple where it had been cut open. The tissue gets so stretched that I was actually flatter after breast implants.”
She wanted “breasts that were heavier at the bottom – a kind of Seventies look. I wasn’t comfortable being showy – my identity is really that of a flat-chested girl. It’s hard to create a natural-looking shape; I don’t know how he does it, but it’s just perfect – exactly what I wanted. He’s an artist. I don’t know if I’d trust anyone else.”
Tal also adds, “I don’t even wear a bra,” before laughing and reflecting, “I probably should, since I made such a large investment.””
Male Buttock Augmentation with Coleman Fat Grafts
Dr. Coleman in New York City Seeing an Increase in Fat Grafting to Buttocks in Men
Dr. Coleman began enlarging female buttocks in the late 1980’s but recently witnessed an increasing demand in men. The procedure involves three steps: harvesting fat, refining fat, and meticulous placement. Removing fat from the love handles, sides or abdomen and transplanting it to the buttock changes a flat contour into a more athletic silhouette.
This man presented with a flat backside(left). Eleven months (right) after one procedure of removing the fat from his love handle/back area and layering into the buttock, re-shaping a flat backside into a much more athletic appearing profile.
Before (left) and eleven months (right) after one fat transfer from the lovehandle to the buttock. This demonstrates the potential to dramatically re-shape the back and buttock with one procedure. Note the improvement in the buttock crease.
Removing from the back, side and abdomen combined with addition to the buttock transforms this man’s body in one procedure with tiny incisions.
–Written by the office staff at TriBeCa Plastic Surgery
Read about Dr. Coleman’s development of these special procedures in Cosmetic Surgery Times.
For more information please refer to earlier posts:
© Coleman 2011
Correct Liposuction Problems with Coleman Fat Grafting
An unattractive buttock crease created by suctioning of the buttock/thigh juncture. This can make a leg look shorter and a buttock look deformed.
Repairing Deformities of the Buttock Crease and Lateral Thighs is now Possible!
As liposuction developed in the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, new problems were created which the world had never seen before: liposuction problems or deformities (deformities created by the suctioning of fat). One of the early liposuction deformities Dr. Sydney Coleman confronted in the mid 1980′s was the purposeful lengthening and deepening of buttock creases in order to create a supposedly more aesthetic appearing buttock. Women were told that a “smiling” buttock was more attractive, so their surgeons would gouge out a long depression running from the lower buttock out to the outer thigh.
Unfortunately deepening the crease below the buttock and extending it out onto the thigh does not usually improve a woman’s appearance. Lengthening and deepening of the buttock creases interrupts the continuous flow of the outer thigh into the buttock, which can create an unnatural looking buttock and the illusion of a shorter leg.
6 years after one injection of fat into the left buttock crease, a remarkable filling in is apparent between the thigh and the leg is created.Side view demonstrates the subtle “lift” that restoring the normal proportion of the buttock crease to the thigh can create.
To correct such liposuction problems or deformities Dr. Coleman first started injecting fat in 1986. By restructuring the buttock crease with fat grafts, the continuous flow of the buttocks into the thighs can be restored to create a more attractive and youthful line of the leg. In fact, restoration of this buttock-thigh interface can have profound effects on the appearance of the lateral thigh as well as the buttocks, with smoothing of apparent irregularities.
The left buttock crease correction before (left), one year after (middle) and four years after (right) one fat injection to the buttock crease extending out over to the left outer thigh. Note the remarkable improvement in texture and color of the skin over time. That is a consistent finding with fat grafting close to the skin.
© Coleman 2008 updated 2013
More examples of correction of liposuction deformities using Dr. Coleman’s specific technique can be found at www.lipostructure.com.
Fat Injection: From Filling to Regeneration
Treatment of liposuction
deformities
LipoStructure for Correction of Liposuction Deformities�
Dr. Coleman’s book Structural Fat Grafting Chapter 6: Iatrogenic Corporal Deformities.
