About locoregional recurrence risk after lipofilling in breast cancer patients: our experience

Lipofilling is a part of the clinical practice for breast reshaping in patients who underwent surgery for breast cancer. A strong debate in the Literature is open about a higher risk of cancer relapse caused by growth factors produced by adipocyte stem cells after their engraftment in the recipient tissue. Nowadays there is no agreement over the use of autologous fat tissue for the correction of aesthetic defects following breast conservative surgery.

We have considered 151 patients who underwent a breast conservative surgery in the period April 2004-April 2009, followed by one or more lipofilling sessions in the period June 2006-August 2012. A careful pre-operative evaluation of the tumor characteristics has been made, through imaging exams, MRI included. An intraoperative evaluation of the tumor dimensions and its distance from the surgical edges has also been made, followed by a microscopic analysis through a shaving technique. Lipofilling has been offered to all the patients on average 24 months after surgery.

We have found no cancer relapses after a mean follow up of 45 months (17-76) after lipofilling and of 69 (27-100) months after surgery.

Considering oncologic surgery, we can affirm that lipofilling is safe for the risk of cancer relapses, if performed using all the parameters included in our clinical protocol.