Brazilian Butt Lift at a Glance
- A Brazilian butt lift, a type of buttock augmentation popularized in Brazil, inserts fat grafts from a patient’s body into selected regions in the buttocks.
- The Brazilian butt lift does not use implants, which are used in a traditional butt augmentation.
- Results include increased buttock size, volume, and lift.
- It is less invasive than an implant or full surgical butt lift. Since the patient’s own fat is used, risk of allergic reactions and complications is reduced.
What is a Brazilian Butt Lift?
A Brazilian butt lift is an advanced butt augmentation technique that uses fat grafting to achieve rounder, more voluptuous buttocks. It can also reduce sagging and drooping of the buttocks.
Fat grafting, also known as fat transfer, removes excess fat from one area of the body and transfers it to another area that might lack in volume, such as the buttocks. Surgeons typically graft excess fat from the thighs and abdomen while performing a Brazilian butt lift.
Rapidly growing in popularity, Brazilian butt lifts procedures increased 16 percent from 2012 to 2013 and is overwhelmingly replacing traditional buttock implants. Fat grafting is safer and provides a more natural effect compared with dermal fillers and implants.
How is a Brazilian butt lift performed?
A Brazilian butt lift is an outpatient surgery lasting about two hours. Once the patient is under anesthesia, the surgeon performs liposuction to retrieve fat to be transferred during the second portion of the surgery. After removing the fat, the surgeon processes and prepares the fat and tissue.
The surgeon then inserts a cannula (thin tube) with connected syringes specially designed for fat grafting into the buttock, making small injections throughout the buttock area.
Recovering from a Brazilian butt lift
Patients play a crucial role in how well and quickly they recover from a Brazilian butt lift. Following the procedure, patients may be monitored for a couple of hours before returning home. Liposuction and grafted areas will be wrapped in a compression garment. It must be worn at all times until the surgeon deems it’s ready to be removed.
For the next three weeks after the surgery, patients must sleep on their stomach or side and avoid prolonged sitting. Sitting for too long of a period will damage and alter the fat grafts. If sitting is absolutely necessary, patients must use a cushion beneath the thighs so that the buttock muscles rise and avoid contact with any firm surface.
The long-term results of a Brazilian butt lift may take up to a year to settle into its permanent shape. All swelling should also be gone several months following the procedure.
Considerations and Risks
Along with standard surgical risks such as infection, bleeding and anesthesia allergies, Brazilian butt lifts may, in some cases, cause:
- Numbness and pain.
- Fat cells may not survive the transplant and be reabsorbed or removed from the body by the immune system, sometimes requiring more than one fat transfer procedure to produce the desired effect.
- Fat embolism (when the fat injection seeps into the blood stream and causes lung inflammation).
- There is a possibility for a revision surgery.
The Brazilian butt lift is safer than surgical butt implants because fat transfer methods drastically reduce infection risk. If patients gain or lose weight, they risk losing full surgical effect. For all patients undergoing fat grafting, the body gradually absorbs the fat grafts and the results will become less dramatic over time.
