The Miami Breast Center is a recognized major referral center for breast reconstruction. Most of our patients do not live in Miami and come to us from all over the World. Many come from Europe and some from as far as `China, Russia, Israel and the Arabic Peninsula. Therefore, like most of our patients, if you do not have a place to stay in Miami, we will help you make arrangements with facilities nearby who cater to our patients. Typically, we prefer that you come to Miami the day before your surgery and to meet again with our doctors on the eve of surgery. During this pre-operative visit Dr. Khouri or one of the other doctors at The Miami Breast Center, will spend a lot of time with you planning the operation in detail. He will go over the operative plan and answer any questions you might still have. He will decide with you where the fat will be taken from and, using a magic marker, he will make a blueprint and design the operation on your body. The next day you will come to our fully accredited surgery center where we have safely performed over 2500 fat grafting procedures. You will spend the day at the center and leave when fully recovered from anesthesia. We recommend you come with someone who can take care of you during the first post-operative days. We also can help you get a nurse who is very familiar with our surgery and who can stay with you in the first 24-48 hours after surgery. If, for example, your surgery is scheduled on a Thursday, you will need to come to Miami on Wednesday afternoon, have the surgery the next day, recuperate in the hotel over the weekend and return for your post operative visit on Monday morning. On that day we will spend some time together teaching you the post operative care of the breast. We might give you a breast brace to apply or teach you to use the external vacuum expander (EVE) so that you maintain as much as possible the volume gained by the grafting procedure. You should plan to leave Miami either Monday late in the afternoon or preferably on Tuesday. Short answer, you should plan to stay in Miami 5-6 days.
Yes. Fat grafting after EVE treatment will change the concavity into a convexity and will allow us to gradually build up a nice, aesthetically pleasing natural breast mound. This is what we do everyday at the Miami Breast Center.
No. Simply put, fat is not an expander. Just injecting fat cannot significantly stretch the tight mastectomy tissues. to give you a nice breast mound. We cannot expect the injected graft to significantly enlarge the tissues and at the same time acquire the blood supply required for its survival. If we pack it too tightly it will choke and not survive. The best chance of getting it to survive is to sprinkle a fine mist of fat droplets inside a recipient site that has already been expanded. The fat will then passively occupy the edema space created by expansion. Best grafting results are achieved when we expand the recipient to accept the larger graft amounts.
Depending on how easy it will be to harvest the fat and whether we need to do additional maneuvers (such as reposition you during the surgery, release scars, remove and replace implants, operate on both breasts), the procedure will take anywhere between 2 – 5 hours. Unless we have to remove your implant, the surgery will be done without any incision. No cutting, we will not use a scalpel. The entire procedure is done with needles, syringes, and fine cannulas the size of an intravenous catheter. However, this is still an operation and we strive for safety and perfection, not speed.
Most patients are able to fly back home 3-4 days after each procedure— and return to a desk job within a week. However, after some of the more elaborate stages, it may take a few weeks till you can return to playing golf or tennis. Of all the breast reconstruction alternatives, fat grafting gives the best possible result. You will regenerate in-situ a new breast that feels and looks very much like the normal breast you lost. And that breast will recover near normal sensation! However, this is still plastic surgery, not magic surgery; we do not perform miracles. Growing back a new breast is a process that will require a few staged procedures over the span of a few months. While there will be no incisions, no cutting, (unless we need to remove your implants) some of the stages might be a bit more elaborate than others.
Yes, our procedure provides the best reconstruction after both: skin sparing mastectomy and lumpectomy. It works extremely well after lumpectomy, and it will help treat the radiation damage your might have developed after the lumpectomy. Radiation causes changes to you skin (pain, redness, increased pigmentation, fibrosis, etc.). These can be reversed using fat grafting. We will therefore treat both the breast deformity as well as the secondary effects of radiation on your tissues.
Yes, if your lumpectomy or mastectomy was done to treat cancer, all insurances cover breasts restoration and procedures on the other breast to achieve symmetry.
Surgery time varies by case. However, most procedures are outpatient and they take between 2-3 hours on average. After being admitted on the morning of your surgery, you should expect to go home the same day.
