[Korea Daily] Liposuction craze and anxiety over implants... Stem cell breast augmentation using discarded fat is the perfect choice

Recently, an increasing number of women in their 20s and 30s are choosing liposuction, which costs millions of won, without hesitation ahead of marriage or employment. Additionally, among the affluent, women who feel ashamed of their bodies after middle age are also considering liposuction. Generally, they boldly take on the challenge of liposuction after their first child has finished their college entrance exams.

Liposuction is highly effective for improving body lines. Many people regret spending time and money on dieting and exercise when they should have received the procedure sooner. In this case, fat removed from the abdomen, thighs, flanks, and upper arms is 'transferred' to the underdeveloped breasts, resulting in breast augmentation by fat grafting.

Recently, as it has become known that artificial breast implants can cause rare cancers, the trend of preferring fat grafting breast augmentation—which is safer than implant insertion—is becoming increasingly prominent. Stem cell breast augmentation is a step further than this. Fat is extracted from the patient's body, and high-purity stem cells are separately extracted through centrifugation and enzyme treatment. When these are mixed with the remaining pure fat cells in a golden ratio and reinjected, the engraftment rate reaches approximately 70%.

Dr. Shin Dong-jin, Director of SC301 Clinic, who has been standardizing the surgical techniques for stem cell breast augmentation since 2007, explained, “There is a significant difference in engraftment rates between isolating stem cells and transplanting them along with pure fat, and conventional fat grafting breast augmentation, which simply extracts fat and injects it into the breasts, with rates ranging from 70% to 10–30%.” He added, “If the engraftment rate is low, the effect of increasing breast volume diminishes, rendering the surgery pointless.” The low engraftment rate of simple fat grafting is due to the transplanted fat being absorbed (disappearing) into surrounding tissues. In contrast, stem cell breast augmentation can dramatically increase the engraftment rate by leveraging the ability of stem cells to rapidly heal damaged tissues through the promotion of angiogenesis and the secretion of growth factors.

Above all, stem cell breast augmentation offers a double benefit: it improves body aesthetics by increasing breast volume while simultaneously reducing excess fat. It is also positive in that it utilizes fat that would otherwise be wasted through repositioning. Furthermore, the breast shape is natural and does not look surgically altered; since no implants are used, there is no need to worry about issues such as leakage, rupture, inflammation, capsular contracture (hardening of breast tissue), or rare cancers caused by implants.

Excess fat can also be utilized in 'facial surgery' to achieve a taut, youthful appearance by transplanting it into sunken cheeks or fine wrinkles around the eyes and mouth. In particular, by using cell banking to store surplus pure fat cells and stem cells in ultra-low temperature freezing equipment at minus 196 degrees or lower, the cell characteristics can be preserved intact, and they can be thawed and used at any time for breast augmentation, facial surgery, anti-aging intravenous injections, osteoarthritis surgery, etc.