NBC 6 BRAVA on Breast Cancer Awareness

Video Transcription

TV announcer: Live, this is South Florida Today on NBC 6 HD. Anchor: For women who have survived breast cancer reconstructive surgery, it can be the first step to reclaiming their bodies after a mastectomy. Dr. Roger Khouri from the Miami Breast Center is here to talk to us about how he's revolutionizing this procedure. Welcome. It is so good to see you. Tell me what you're doing for women, to basically make them whole again.

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: Well, this is really a breakthrough, what we're offering at the Miami Breast Center. We're able to restore what they've lost, without any incisions.

Anchor: No incisions?

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: No incisions, no foreign body, no implant. We regrow the breast that they've lost.

Anchor: And so it's not a short-term thing. It's probably like a process thing.

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: It's a process. The breast grows back. We restore what's lost without any incision, any major surgery, all outpatients, but it's a process.

Anchor: OK. You're gonna demonstrate a little bit as to how part of this works, the BRAVA, and you could explain what that is.

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: Well, what we do, we start by gentle liposuction, and we inject the fat in the breast. People have tried that before. It didn't work. The key to success is this BRAVA device. We've had BRAVA for awhile. BRAVA has been around for awhile; for about ten years. Hundreds of thousands of women have used it to simply enlarge the breast, not to reconstruct the breast. Just healthy women wearing it. What we realized is that as they wear it, it stretches, and that creates a scaffold that we can see the little droplets of fat and restore the equivalent of a normal breast, instead of injecting just a big blob of fat.

Anchor: That is absolutely amazing.

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: BRAVA has a very soft dome that's attached and it's worn like a bra. Women wear it at night. There's a small smartbox that maintains the pressure. It's a gentle suction, worn at night, and gradually it stretches the space; it creates an edema, a matrix, a scaffold, that we fill with liposuctioned fat and we recreate a breast.

Anchor: You used to think of (and you can have a seat back here with me) of this being such a radical surgery and so, just, I mean, difficult for a woman. But you've eased all that for them.

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: That's what I used to do. Now, I think the future is minimally invasive, better results, through less incision, less surgery, and the patient feels that they're getting it back.

Anchor:Without doing a patch?

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: Without doing a patch.

Anchor: You know what? It must take such an emotional strain off of a woman, not having to be cut and sliced, you know, to get back what was once hers.

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's really very gratifying for me. I've done a lot of breast reconstruction with the other techniques, but with this one, the women tell me, "It's like my breast is growing back again!" And they feel like they're really on their way to recovery and to get it back whole again.

Anchor: And it's amazing, because women, from what I hear, are coming from all over the world to see you.

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: That's right. They've heard about this and the Miami Breast Center. Their surgeon still doesn't offer it, and so they get in touch with us. We're training surgeons. More and more surgeons have to know how to; provide this to their patients.

Anchor: And you really developed and then perfected this.

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: Right. We started about six, seven years ago and we've improved and improved it, and it's ready for prime time.

Anchor: All right. Tell me a little bit, quickly, we've got about 30 seconds left, about the Miami Breast Center. Why is it such a key place in this community, and, really, for other women around the world to come and have this procedure and others?

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: We're providing innovative treatment. This is the cutting edge. This is, in my mind, the best way to restore a breast. And they're getting it without hospitalization; surgery. And the benefit of liposuction. They're getting body contour out of this.

Anchor: Oh!

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: And the excess fat is used to restore the breast. It's a twofer.

Anchor: And you're restoring lives at the same time.

Anchor: Dr. Khouri, thank you so much. It's such an honor to talk to you.

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: Thank you.

Anchor: And he ran away from surgery just to get here. He didn't leave the patient on the bed. He waited until he was finished. All right. Thank you sir.

Dr. Roger K. Khouri: Thank you.