Backgrounds: Autologous fat grafting has become a frequent, simply reproducible and low-risk technique in breast reconstruction. The potential risk of fat tissue transfer to the breast in oncologic patients remains to be discussed, but one must clearly distinguish the situation where there is a breast parenchyma left and where the whole gland has been removed, like in our study. Although lipotransfer has become very popular, only a limited number of case series have been reported up to date. The presented study describes an optimized treatment and complications for breast reconstruction after total mastectomy by lipotransfer alone.
Patients and methods: A retrospective study was performed in two French centers with five surgeons between February 2011 and June 2015, including 54 patients. Inclusion criteria were patients with prior breast cancer, treated by mastectomy and with a finished breast reconstruction with exclusive fat grafting. Exclusion criteria were prior reconstruction with implant or flap. We used two technics for liposuction: manual aspiration with syringes (pouret kit®) or waterjet assisted liposuction (body-jet®). The BRAVA® could be combined with the reconstruction. Our study had 2 main objectives: evaluate the factors influencing the number of surgical procedures and study the complications and carcinologic evolution. Statistical analysis was performed using stata 13.1 SE.
Results: We included 54 patients, 49 delayed reconstructions including two bilateral reconstructions and 5 immediate reconstructions. The morphologic data showed: a normal BMI for 70,3 % (38/54) patients and a bra cup A or B for 72,2 % (39/54). 39 patients had radiotherapy during the cancer treatment and the mean time between radiotherapy and reconstruction was 19 months. For the patients without radiotherapy, the mean time between mastectomy and reconstruction was 22 months. 6 patients (11%) were smoker or diabetic. We used manual aspiration in 37 patients (68,5 %) and hydro dissection in 17 patients (31,5%). 10 patients received BRAVA system in complement. We performed 231 fat grafting procedures with an average of 4,2 per patient. The mean total quantity of fat injected was 904 ml per patient with a mean quantity per procedure of 219 ml. The mean time between two procedures was 4,3 months. Only the prior radiotherapy treatment increases the number of fat grafting procedures significantly (p=0,02) and the use of hydro dissection with bodyjet decreases the number of fat grafting procedures significantly (p=0,04). We observed one failure of procedure requiring an implant and three patients with metastatic disease without local recurrence with a mean follow of 5, 2 years. We also observed 3% of infectious complications (7/231) and 19 patients presented fat necrosis (34%). Of these 19 cases of fat necrosis, 6 (11 %) required a surgery.
Conclusion: Autologous fat grafting can be proposed as an alternative for total reconstruction after mastectomy with a low level of complications and no local recurrence in our study. Only anterior radiotherapy increases the number of procedures probably due to fibrosis and lack of cutaneous flexibility.
Citation Format: Bordes V, Campion L, Lejeune F, Loirat Y, Boiffard F, Brillaud-Meflah V, Dravet F, Bouffaut A-L. Exclusive fat grafting breast reconstruction after mastectomy: Feasibility and complications on 54 patients [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2016 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P3-14-04.
