Jiffy Boobs

The headlines were irresistible: "Lunch Break Boob Jobs Headed to Europe."  According to some news outlets that carried the story, doctors would be using women's own belly fat for a one-hour breast-augmentation procedure that could be available as early as next year.  But if you think getting a flatter stomach and bigger cup size in the time it takes to eat a sandwich sounds too good to be true, you're right. So let us set the record straight: there's no such thing as the one-hour boob job--unless you count some of the architectural wonders now being sold at Victoria's Secret.

So how did the news-that's-not get such, um, pick up? Well, there is a globule of truth in that a small San Diego-based biotech company called Cytori Therapeutics has developed a system that uses the stem cells in fat to make fat grafts more viable. That's important if you're going to have surgery involving relocation of fat cells. (Left to its own devices, transplanted fat often dies or gets re-absorbed. If used to boost breasts, it can calcify in a way that can make make cancer detection more difficult.) But not only is the Cytori technique still in clinical trials, the procedure will not take place at drive-by speed.

 "No one is going to leave for lunch, have the procedure and go back to work like it's no problem," says Marc Hedrick, president of Cytori Therapeutics and former director of the Laboratory of Regenerative Bioengineering and Repair for the Department of Surgery at UCLA. Hedrick expects the procedure to take two or more hours under general anesthesia, plus recovery time. "This is surgery and it carries all the potential risks of any surgical procedure," he says. And, says Hedrick, Cytori's focus, at the moment, is breast reconstruction for cancer patients who can't tolerate artificial implants--though it could someday be used for cosmetic breast enlargements.

Back to the hype. The sensationalized reports began with an article entitled "Breast boost in your lunch hour," in the July 9 issue of the British trade magazine "Chemistry & Industry." That piece was then picked up by blogs and news Web sites. Soon, publicity-seeking plastic surgeons were offering up interviews to discuss a procedure that they'd never seen. When the article appeared, Cytori contacted Chemistry & Industry about the errors and the piece was pulled from the magazine's Web site. The magazine's editor, Neil Eisberg, told NEWSWEEK that "an earlier, uncorrected draft of the story was published by mistake," and he notes that the magazine is working with Cytori on an in-depth follow-up piece about the Cytori system that will clarify matters.

The quickie boob-boost story, though, didn't just raise more hopes than bra sizes. It overshadowed some truly exciting research into ways that fat can be created and moved around the body for everything from reconstruction in the aftermath of a trauma, to the correction of birth defects, use in injectable wrinkle fillers and breast or buttock enlargements. So while there may be legions of scientists pursuing ways to melt fat, or prevent it from growing in the first place, a growing group of researchers around the country are striving to keep fat alive. "The ultimate goal in plastic surgery is to restore form with your own natural tissue," explains Stephen B. Baker, a Georgetown University associate professor of plastic surgery who is working on a variety of strategies to improve the reliability of fat grafts under a grant from the National Institutes of Health and the Plastic Surgery Education Foundation. "Artificial materials are more prone to getting infected, moving, or not aging well with the body," he says.

 And though natural fat grafts are being used in some reconstructive procedures, graft viability can vary so much that many surgeons hesitate to use it for purely cosmetic purposes.  "It's not just unpredictable," says Baker. "It's unpredictably unpredictable."  And in February, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery announced jointly that they did not recommend fat grafts for cosmetic breast augmentation because of the low survival rate of the transferred cells and long-term problems with cancer detection.  
 
Those who want to boost their busts still have the FDA-approved option of saline or silicone breast implants. But, says Baker, plastic surgeons would love to have the option of a more natural substance that wouldn't have the disadvantages of man-made materials.  And he says he doesn't hesitate to detail those disadvantages to prospective patients:  "I feel it's my responsibility to tell the 22-year-olds who come in asking for breast implants that this is a lifetime commitment--you'll age, but your implants won't," he says. "In 10 or 20 years, as your natural tissue loses elasticity it can hang over the implant like Snoopy's nose. Then you need to get a bigger implant to fill out the skin--and you can only go so big--or you'll have to get a breast lift."