Brazilian Butt Lift Surgery (Fat Transfer to Buttock) Sydney

Planning

Your BBL consultation with Dr Dona

During your consultation at our Sydney clinic, Dr Dona will assess your body to ensure you are healthy and technically suitable to have a BBL. The key to being a good candidate for the Brazilian butt lift is to have an adequate amount of fat in other areas of your body. A thin person with no excess fat is not is not suitable for these procedures. Dr Dona will also ensure you have realistic expectations about your surgery, post-operative course and likely results.

Preparation for BBL surgery

All patients that book surgery will be provided with pre and post-operative guidelines by our clinic so you can be fully prepared.

Any person undergoing any surgery needs to be fit and healthy and have realistic expectations of the results and a clear understanding of the potential complications. Also, you must be full aware of all the potential complications and risks associated with the chosen operation.

For a BBL, you must not smoke (and no nicotine replacements) for a month prior to surgery and for at least one month after surgery. Smoking increases the risk of complications and decreases the take of the injected fat. Patients should avoid taking Aspirin or any other blood thinner unless otherwise indicated by the surgeon.

You need to ensure you have prepared your home and support person/s to have a smooth post-operative course. This will optimize your chance to fully rest and recover properly. A ride to and from the procedure should be arranged as well as someone to stay with you for at least the first 24 hours (ideally one week!).

Compile a checklist of things that must get done before surgery and things you’ll need/want during your recovery. Prepare a comfort area with extra blankets and pillows. Extra towels laid on the sleeping area will prevent staining of the sheets.

Brazillian Butt Lift Procedure

A BBL is performed under a general anesthetic in a hospital typically as a day surgery procedure. Depending on the amount of liposuction required, the entire procedure can take anywhere from 2 – 4 hours. The BBL is actually a two-stage surgical procedure:

Stage 1: During stage 1 of the surgery, fat is liposuctioned from areas of the body where it is in excess. The typical areas include the thighs, abdominal wall, love handles, lower back and mid-back. This provides the added benefit of removing excess fat from other parts of the body, typically sculpting the waistline to further accentuate the buttocks.  The fat removed via liposuction is then processed and purified, and the second stage of the surgery begins.

Stage 2: This stage of the procedure involves injecting of the patient’s own fat back into the buttocks, where it is sculpted, making the buttocks larger and rounder. Once the appropriate amount of fat is injected, the procedure is complete.

A BBL is a body contouring procedure to enhance your curves by relocating fat from less desirable places to more desirable places.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have other surgical options for a bigger butt?

Over the last few years BBL surgery has become increasingly popular due to the increased desire for a fuller derriere. However, other options are available for buttock enhancement surgery.

Buttock Augmentation

The use of silicone implants for buttock augmentation has been around for many years. Unlike breast implant surgery, Buttock implant surgery is associated with very high complication rates and therefore many surgeons do not perform them. Dr Dona does not offer buttock implant surgery.

Buttock Lift Surgery

A butt lift is a skin-tightening procedure which eliminates loose, hanging skin from above the buttocks, which elevates the typically low hanging buttock tissues to improve the contour of the entire buttock.

Patients who have loose skin above their buttocks are the best candidate for this procedure. Patients who have undergone massive weight loss are typical candidates for this surgery. The extra skin must be eliminated to get the best lift.

For this butt lift technique, an ellipse of skin and fat is cut out from the upper part of the buttock at the junction with the lower back.  After this skin is excised, the skin is sutured back together so that there is no loose skin above the buttocks and the buttocks are lifted. This allows for a true elevation of the buttock tissues and a reshaping of the entire butt.

In order to remove the excess skin and tissue, a scar will appear where the skin is joined back together. It is similar to a tummy tuck surgery, but involving your butt.

Note: This is a very different procedure from the Brazilian Butt Lift, which ‘lifts’ the butt by injecting your own fat into the buttocks. The Butt Lift is different because it removes the excess skin.

How much fat can you inject?

The amount of fat that can be injected into each buttock cheek can vary from 400ml up to 2000ml! However, most surgeons would typically use no more than 1000ml per cheek.

Whilst it is tempting to think that more is better, this is not quite true.

A number of factors determine how much fat is injected. These include:

• How much is available
• How much is wanted/needed
• The tightness/looseness of the skin and buttock tissues

Unfortunately, the more fat that’s injected, the greater the percentage of fat that does not survive. Therefore it becomes counterproductive and increases the potential complications if too much fat is injected. The best analogy is if you place a few plant seeds in a small pot of soil. If you sow a small number of seeds, all are likely to germinate and survive/sprout. If a very large number of seeds are placed in that small pot of soil, many of them will die and only a smaller percentage will survive/germinate. There is a limit to how many seeds will survive and grow within a limited space.

How much of the transferred fat survives?

This is a highly controversial question and many surgeons will provide conflicting answers. Numerous factors affect how much of the fat will survive, and therefore contribute to a long lasting result. These include:

• Surgical technique for the liposuction
• Fat processing technique
• Fat re-injection technique
• Fat volume injected
• Patients general health
• Smoking
• Patients’ compliance with post-operative instructions
• Unknown!

What all surgeons agree on is that a substantial percentage of the fat that is re-injected does NOT survive. The figures used varies anywhere between 20-50%. However, whatever is left after 3-6 months has survived and is permanent.

Can you have other surgical procedures with a BBL?

A BBL can take up to 4 hours to perform. In addition to this, the requirements to avoid sitting and restricted sleeping positions makes it highly undesirable to have any other surgical procedures at the same time as your BBL. Doing so significantly increases the risks of potential complications and compromises the potential results of your BBL and the associated other procedure.

Therefore, Dr Dona will typically not perform any other operation, such as a tummy tuck or mummy makeover at the same time as your BBL surgery.

Your recovery – what to expect after Brazilian butt lift BBL surgery Sydney

Immediately after surgery, your butt will be large and swollen.  All the fat that has been injected will be there, and you will be very swollen from the surgery itself.

You will feel sore and bruised in all the areas that had liposuction, and in your buttocks.

After 2 – 4 weeks the initial swelling will go away and a significant amount of the butt size will be lost.  Then over the next 3 months, fat which has not survived the procedure is slowly cleared out of the body. So it is at least three months before you get your final results.

Following the surgery, you will be placed in a compression garment that will help the healing process and support areas that underwent liposuction and the buttocks. This is to be worn for 6 weeks.

You should be up and walking the day following your surgery.

You should avoid putting much weight on your buttocks for a few weeks following the procedure. In fact, avoiding sitting directly on your buttocks for lengthy periods of time for a full two weeks. The pressure could displace the fat or cause more of it to be absorbed. If you must sit, you should sit on a padded or cushioned surface, and not on hard surfaces. We recommend you purchase a boppy pillow to use for the first few weeks for those times when you must sit down. When sitting, try leaning forward to have your weight placed on your thighs, rather than your buttocks.

In order to take direct pressure off the bottom, you should avoid sleeping on your back. Ideally you should sleep on your stomach or on your sides.

You should be able to return to work, assuming it is not a job that involved rigorous physical activity, after 2 weeks. On average, one should wait around one month to begin to feel normal, two months before returning to exercise, and three-six months to see final results.

How long until you have the final results?

Like many operations, it takes a while to achieve the final results from surgery. You will need to wait at least three months, and ideally up to six months to fully appreciate your new buttocks.

What are the possible complications?

The potential complications of a BBL procedure include all the complications associated with liposuction combined with all the complications associated with fat transfer. Dr Dona will go through these in detail with you during your consultation and provide detailed written information regarding the same.

However, whenever someone is having an anaesthetic, no matter what it’s for, then things can potentially go wrong. That is why no surgery should be considered “minor”. Of course, whilst the chances of the following potential problems occurring are extremely small, you still need to know about them.

General Potential Complications:

• Anaesthetic issues – which can affect heart, lungs or cause strokes
• Allergic reactions – This can be very mild to life threatening.
• Clots
  • Superficial vein clots, which is a complication of the cannula or drip that’s placed in your vein
  • Deep vein clots – these can potentially spread to the lung and be life threatening. We do several things during surgery and after surgery whilst you’re in hospital to minimise the risk of you developing these.
• Wound problems – such as infection and breakdown
• Bleeding – early or late
• Death – whilst the chances of this is exceeding rare, any of the previous issues can result in this devastating complication.

All these potential problems are standard for any operation, although some operations and some patients have an increased risk of developing them.

Specific Potential Complications:

• Dimpling/Irregularity
• Skin Sensory Changes
• Skin Necrosis
• Fat necrosis
• Lumpiness
• Stretch Marks
• Inadequate shape
• Dissatisfied with size
• Asymmetry
• Damage to deep muscles
• Damage to deep nerves
• Seromas
• Skin discoloration
• Need for revision surgery and the associated costs.
• Chest problems – pneumothorax; pneumonia; pulmonary embolus; fat embolus
• Death – BBL surgery has a notorious reputation as being the highest risk cosmetic surgery procedure for this devastating complication. Fat embolus is thought to be the cause of this specific complication.