A popular aesthetic medicine technique to increase the size of your breast without going through the scalpel box, it has however been banned by the French Health Security Agency since 2011.

Hyaluronic acid is naturally present in the body. Its major role is to maintain the level of hydration of the skin since it is able to retain up to 1000 times its weight in water. But over time, the natural production of hyaluronic acid decreases, causing skin aging.

Star active in cosmetic products, it is also a treatment of choice in aesthetic medicine. There are two types of injections:

• the injection of crosslinked hyaluronic acid, that is to say composed of molecules unique to each other, to fill or increase volumes;
• the injection of non-crosslinked hyaluronic acid – or skin booster – which has a moisturizing action to improve the appearance and quality of the skin.

Breast augmentation with hyaluronic acid was performed in France by injections of Macrolane into the breast. “It is an injectable product, composed of dense hyaluronic acid. Very reticulated, it has a volumizing effect ”, explains Doctor Franck Benhamou, plastic and aesthetic surgeon in Paris.

Not very painful, this technique of breast augmentation without surgery did not require hospitalization.

How is the session going?

Performed under general anesthesia, cross-linked hyaluronic acid injections into the chest most often lasted less than an hour. Performed by a doctor or a cosmetic surgeon, the injection was made at the level of the submammary fold, between the gland and the muscle.

The patient could then leave the practice and resume normal activity the next day.

The amount of injectable being limited, the patient could not hope for more than an additional small cup size. “The result was however not stable, because hyaluronic acid is an absorbable product, underlines Dr. Benhamou. It was necessary to renew the injections annually. In the end, it is a very expensive medical procedure because it is not sustainable. ”

Banned by the French Agency for Sanitary Safety of Health Products (Afssaps) in August 2011, breast augmentation by injection of hyaluronic acid is today an illegal practice on French soil.

A decision taken following a study carried out by the public establishment, highlighting “the risks of disturbance of the images of imaging and of difficulties of palpation of the breasts during clinical examinations”. Indeed, the product used for breast augmentation could disrupt the screening of possible breast pathologies such as breast cancer, “consequently delaying the early initiation of appropriate medical treatments”.

Risks that do not concern breast prosthesis implantation or fat injection techniques. This study does not question the aesthetic use of hyaluronic acid in other parts of the body such as the face or buttocks.

“The risk was also linked to doctors who used products that were less expensive but of questionable quality, which could be dangerous for health or offer very poor aesthetic results,” adds Dr. Benhamou.

Another alternative to increase the volume of her breast without cosmetic surgery, lipofilling has replaced injections of hyaluronic acid into the breasts. A fat transfer technique that sits in the top of the most widely practiced techniques in the world.

Several milliliters of fat are taken by liposuction from the patient and then purified before being injected into the breast. The figure and therefore the result therefore vary depending on the morphology of the patients.

“We get a similar result as with hyaluronic acid, but lasting. The limit is to have enough fat to collect to be able to inject a sufficient quantity of fat into the breasts ”, concludes Dr Benhamou.