However, not all trans women will pursue top surgery. Breasts can be augmented with saline or silicone implants or fat grafting. Depending on your goals, we can use implants or fat-transfer breast augmentation.
Breast implants are often preferred because of their predictability β we can control their exact shape and size. For fat transfer breast augmentation, I use liposuction to remove fat from target areas of your body ex. Fat transfer involves smaller incisions than implants, but can only make a modest change in breast size. However, you can achieve larger breasts with implants than with fat grafting. The breast augmentation procedure is mostly similar for cisgender and transgender women.
The big difference is trans women generally have less starting breast tissue. For that reason, I generally require patients to complete a full year of hormone therapy before their breast augmentation.
A year of estrogen is usually enough to start breast development and make your final results more natural-looking. For women without sufficient breast growth, a preliminary surgical procedure may be required. We can place devices called tissue expanders in front of your chest muscles. This process slowly stretches your chest skin and tissue to make room for the implants. While this additional step is sometimes required by cisgender patients, especially following a mastectomy, it is more common for transgender patients.
An alternative to the placement of tissue expanders is to place smaller breast implants, allow your skin to adjust to them, and then remove and replace them with larger implants down the line. The first step on the road to augmentation mammoplasty breast augmentation is a consultation. I meet with all my potential breast augmentation patients to go over their goals and medical history.
