Reproducible Volume Restoration and Efficient Long-term Volume Retention after Point-of-care Standardized Cell-enhanced Fat Grafting in Breast Surgery

Lipoaspirated fat grafts are used to reconstruct volume defects in breast surgery. Although intraoperative treatment decisions are influenced by volume changes observed immediately after grafting, clinical effect and patient satisfaction are dependent on volume retention over time. The study objectives were to determine how immediate breast volume changes correlate to implanted graft volumes, to understand long-term adipose graft volume changes, and to study the “dose” effect of adding autologous stromal vascular fraction (SVF) cells to fat grafts on long-term volume retention. METHODS: A total of 74 patients underwent 77 cell-enhanced fat grafting procedures to restore breast volume deficits associated with cosmetic and reconstructive indications. Although all procedures used standardized fat grafts, 21 of the fat grafts were enriched with a low dose of SVF cells and 56 were enriched with a high SVF cell dose. Three-dimensional imaging was used to quantify volume retention over time RESULTS: For each milliliter of injected fat graft, immediate changes in breast volume were shown to be lower than the actual volume implanted for all methods and clinical indications treated. Long-term breast volume changes stabilize by 90–120 days after grafting. Final volume retention in the long-term was higher with high cell-enhanced fat grafts. CONCLUSIONS: Intraoperative immediate breast volume changes do not correspond with implanted fat graft volumes. In the early postoperative period (7–21 days), breast volume increases more than the implanted volume and then rapidly decreases in the subsequent 30–60 days. High-dose cell-enhanced fat grafts decrease early postsurgical breast edema and significantly improve long-term volume retention.