Can I Have Bigger Hip Implants?

Q: Dr. Eppley, Here are the attached before, after, and hip implant outline pictures. To reiterate, I feel the hip implants designed help address the goals mentioned but might fall short of making this desired silhouette change. To outline the goals in order of importance to least important:

1) To look as natural as possible if not seamlessly natural with the rest of the body.

2) To feminize the hip and side-butt area.

3) To augment the hip (and body) silhouette to get as close to or emulate that supplied after changes picture.

4) To fill in the congenital dip that is currently present on the side-butt hip area to look more if not seamless with the rest of that area in terms of volume.

I also wanted to know what, to the best of their knowledge, would be the trade-off between the scars produced for the current planned implant vs anything larger.

A:Your hip augmentation goals and objectives are not in question. What is in question and is the fundamental dilemma that you face is the following:

To review the fundamental issue with hip implants and their high and predictable postoperative problems that they cause, it comes down to this general premise:

Accept a smaller implant size/coverage with a reduced risk of problems…or go for a bigger coverage area and accept the assured equalae that comes with it.

The key question of course is what is the adverse sequelae that will happen with larger surface area hip implants…the bottom third will bend and the inferior edge of the implant will show,. That will occur with a 100% predictability based on the coverage area you have outlined. The question thus is not whether it will happen but how significant will that effect be.

Dr. Barry Eppley

World-Renowned Plastic Surgeon