Leslie: Hi, I'm Leslie Thompson for the Plastic Surgery Channel. I'm at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery and I am joined today by Dr. Kiya Movassaghi who is a plastic surgeon, board certified in Eugene, Oregon. Dr. Movassaghi has more than seven years of experience and he's also an assistant clinical professor at the Oregon Health Sciences University. Harvard graduate, Harvard Medical School. Thank you very much for Joining us today. Dr. Movassaghi: Thank you for having me. Leslie: Great. Well, Dr. Movassaghi I know obviously you do all kinds of plastic surgery, but you had mentioned to me earlier that breast augmentation, breast enhancement is one of your areas of specialization. Can you talk a little bit about some new trends perhaps that you've seen in terms of techniques that are being developed or devices being developed for this? Dr. Movassaghi: Sure. As you mention, I do a great deal of breast surgery in my practice and it has a great important specialty. In the area of breast surgery in terms of reconstruction whereas augmentations have a lot of technological advances in the recent past. One of the most important advances being the introduction of the gel implants. As many of your audience know, there was a lot of controversy over the silicon implants in the 90's and these implants were greatly studied and over the past seven to ten years, thousands of patients were entered into a study in a multicenter [SP] status. The implant's safety were once again approved. As of 2006, we had the privilege of having these implants brought back into the market, but obviously these are the more advanced version of the silicon implants. T he old silicon implant was the liquid silicon and the new version of the implants are what's called the cohesive gel implants. That's been the greatest advantage in the field of breast reconstruction and breast augmentation. Now, with the use of the breast implants you have two applications. One is for women who have had the diagnosis of breast cancer and unfortunately either had to have either mastectomy or partial mastectomy. The second category of patients are the patients who either have deficiency of breast volume or asymmetry. The introduction of the gel implant has made it a lot easier for the surgeons to achieve a much more
cosmetic and aesthetically appealing result for the patients. In my practice there are different obviously companies out there. In my practice I use Mentor primarily for most of my patients. Here's an example of a saline implant. As you can see, the saline implants come in a deflated shell, has the shell itself as silicon, but it's deflated and has a port where in the operating room, the surgeon connects the tube and fills the shell with saline. The new version of the implant which is the gel implant, these are prefilled [SP] implants. This is essentially what's called the memory gel implants. The advantages of these implants is number one, it feels much more natural. Number two, it looks more natural. Number three, especially for breast reconstruction patients where there is deficiency of skin or fat covering the implants. These gel implants are of great advantage. Now the good news is in the horizon we have the future version of these implants coming out which is the shape stable implants. It's essentially a tear shaped implant and it has other advantages. Unfortunately, to this date they're still under investigation and FDA has not approved them, but we have the luxury of using the gel implants today for most of my patients. In my practice I use about 98 percent gel implants and 2 percent saline implants. If you ask, who are the patients selecting saline? Most of them are the patients who are younger than 22. That's one of the FDA restrictions for the gel implants. You have to be 22 or older. Leslie: Interesting. So in terms of the difference between saline and the silicon gel that's currently in use, from a safety perspective, you just said that the silicon gel implants have undergone a large scale review again, but just a comparison between the two, why do you choose to use the silicon for the majority of your patients? Dr. Movassaghi: As I mentioned earlier from a patient perspective is the outcome that matters the most. From a physician's perspective who's also a scientist and I like to analyze the data. The data on the gel implant is very convincing. When the data was presented to the FDA three years ago, it was demonstrated that the gel implants actually are a much safer product than the saline counterparts from the capsule contracture rate; which is the scar tissue formation on the implants to rupture rate to infection rate to reoperation rate.
From all those criteria, the gel implants that we're using today are much safer and better product. Cosmetically, there's no way I can get the same results with the saline implants that I can now get with gel implants. I'm very excited to see the next generation of the implant which shows the stable implants to come into the market so we can ever offer the patients more flexibility and hopefully achieve a better result. Leslie: Interesting. Well, that's something to look forward to. Well, thank you so much for your time today Doctor. Dr. Movassaghi: Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. Leslie: Thank you for joining us today. I'm Leslie Thompson for the Plastic Surgery Channel.
Contact Dr. Movassaghi at Movassaghi Plastic Surgery & Ziba Medical Spa 330 South Garden Way Suite 100 Eugene, OR 97401 541-686-8700