For many women who want to enhance their breasts, the thought of undergoing typical breast augmentation with implants seems too overwhelming, too high maintenance, or just plain risky. There are worries about recovery time, side effects and scarring. Whether it’s elective or not, surgical scars are a reality anytime you go under the knife, and the severity of your potential breast augmentation scars depends on the type of surgery, and the skill of your board certified plastic surgeon.

But before you give up on the body of your dreams, there is a great option for implant-free breast enhancement: Fat transfer to the breast. A fat transfer to the breasts, sometimes called a natural breast augmentation, or a fat transfer breast augmentation, is a two-part process that takes excess, unwanted fat from one part of the body through liposuction and injects it into the breast to enhance their size and shape. The results can be more natural in look and feel than implants and it leaves no scarring on the breast. Plus, there’s also the sculpting benefits that come with liposuction.

While your plastic surgeon will do everything possible to minimise scarring, there’s really no getting around the fact that the incision needed to place a breast implant is much larger than the tiny dot needed for a fat transfer breast augmentation. Therefore, the scars from an augmentation with implants is much more significant that the minimal, if any, scars from fat transfers. In fact, when it comes to breast augmentation, there is no operation that has as minimal scarring as augmenting through fat transfer. The procedure utilizes a tiny, little pinhole, either in the border of the areola on the bottom, or in the breast crease—and typically, you only need just one!

For many patients, a breast lift is needed in addition to a fat transfer to the breasts, and thus, may have some scarring from their breast lift surgery. A mastopexy, or as it’s known colloquially, a breast lift, is a surgical procedure to treat the loss of elasticity or firmness to the breasts and restores and reshapes the breast to appear more youthful. There are three main options when it comes to breast lifts, but the one with the least amount of scarring is known as the lollipop breast lift. A lollipop lift is ideal for those that need moderate reshaping and lift, as it allows your surgeon to remove both the excess skin and reshape the breast while only leaving minimal scars that can be easily hidden—even in the most barely-there bikini tops.

How Long Do Scars Take to Fade After Breast Augmentation?

After a breast augmentation with implants, your scars can take up to a year or more to fade. Your breast augmentation scar healing process really depends on your dedication and consistency. Thankfully, there are a number of ways to reduce scars after a natural or traditional breast augmentation or a breast lift. Dr. Barrett has a carefully curated postoperative recovery regimen to ensure the only reminder of your procedure are your desired results. Specifically, he recommends Skinuva®, a surgical scar healing cream that’s backed by science and uses highly selective growth factors which are shown to be twice as effective as silicone cream. Skinuva® is ideal for treating newer scars, typically ones that are less than a year old, and healing scars after plastic surgery that are still red, raised, thickened, tender, itchy, and/or darkly pigmented.

Another key treatment in his postoperative scar regimen is LightStim, an easy-to-use, at-home device that combines therapeutic light energy with patented technology to treat scars from within. It works by using red light therapy to penetrate the body at the cellular level with specific wavelengths of light, reducing inflammation and supporting tissue repair and regeneration.

Do you want to learn more about Barrett Plastic Surgery? Keep up to date by subscribing to our blog and following us on social media at Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Realself, YouTube, Snapchat, Yelp, and Facebook for updates.

Thank you for visiting!