Buttock Augmentation in Mexico City
In the autopsies of deaths from this surgery in Mexico and Colombia, every death was associated with fat injected inside the muscle. That is why here the fat goes exclusively into the subcutaneous plane, with ultrasound guidance.
What it is and how it works
what changed the safety of this surgery was not the procedure, it was the plane. In gluteal fat grafting we use your own fat, harvested by liposuction from the abdomen, waist and back, and place it in the buttock, always above the muscle and never inside it. The change is twofold: the waist is defined where the fat is taken from, and the buttock is projected where it is grafted. When there is not enough fat, or when you want projection fat cannot provide, the option is an implant. And if you have a lateral hip depression, known as hip dips, it is corrected by grafting fat there in the same procedure, so the transition between waist, hip and thigh is continuous.
What it treats, in detail
- Increasing volume and improving buttock shape.
- Defining the waist and back while harvesting the fat.
- Correcting the lateral hip depression (hip dips).
- A flat or poorly projected buttock in slim patients, where an implant is usually indicated.
- Correcting a previous graft that resorbed.
How we do it here
this is the procedure where technique matters most, and we want you to know exactly what we do. Fat goes exclusively into the subcutaneous plane, above the gluteal fascia, never inside the muscle. We use blunt-tipped cannulas larger than 4 mm, because a thick, rigid cannula is less likely to injure a vessel wall and allows more controlled fat distribution. We maintain a superficial trajectory, constant depth control, and we do not angle the cannula downward, which is one of the three explicit recommendations of the international task force, along with avoiding the deep muscle and avoiding thin cannulas. And we use real-time ultrasound guidance, which lets us see where the cannula is relative to the muscular fascia: it is the measure that has most changed the safety record of this procedure worldwide. We also measure your body composition with InBody and record your shape with 3D scanning before and after. We want you informed: you can and should ask in any consultation whether the fat is placed exclusively subcutaneously and whether ultrasound is used. We explain it without you having to ask.
Who it’s for
for grafting, if you have enough fat in donor areas, stable weight and proportionate expectations. For an implant, if you are slim with no donor fat, or if you want projection that fat cannot reach.
Who it’s not for
we do not operate with unstable weight, uncontrolled obesity, coagulation disorders or a history of thrombosis, if you smoke, or with expectations of disproportionate volume. And if there is not enough donor fat, we do not force the procedure, because forcing it leads to injecting deeper, which is precisely the dangerous part.
What to expect
- 01
general anesthesia with a regional block to control pain, lasting 2 to 6 hours depending on the areas treated.
- 02
We recommend one night of hospitalization to monitor you and manage pain properly.
- 03
Drains are placed in all our body contouring surgeries.
- 04
You will wear compression garments for 3 months, with first- and second-stage garments from a specialized Brazilian brand, changing stages as swelling subsides.
- 05
Your recovery is not just waiting: it includes an intensive physiotherapy protocol with lymphatic drainage, device-assisted therapy and dermatofunctional physiotherapy, with two clear goals, modulating fibrosis and getting the most from your skin’s retraction without leaving sequelae.
- 06
Hyperbaric chamber sessions are added to that.
- 07
Exercise at 4 to 6 weeks.
- 08
Final contour appears between 3 and 6 months, when swelling subsides and the skin finishes retracting.
- 09
The highest-risk window is the surgery and the first 24 hours, which is why the overnight stay is not a formality.
- 10
Restriction on sitting directly on the buttocks for weeks.
Risks and what we tell you honestly
we need to talk about where this procedure’s bad reputation comes from, because it is real and because understanding it is what allows you to choose well.
In 2017, an international task force surveyed 692 surgeons who collectively reported 198,857 procedures, and estimated mortality at between 1 in 2,351 and 1 in 6,241 cases, the highest of any aesthetic surgery. The cause was pulmonary fat embolism.
And here is the figure that matters most to us, because it comes from our region: a review of mortality from this surgery in Mexico and Colombia, spanning 10 and 15 years, identified 22 deaths from pulmonary fat embolism, 13 in Mexico and 9 in Colombia. The autopsies confirmed that ALL of the deaths were associated with fat grafting inside the muscle. All of them.
The mechanism is described and easy to understand: for a massive fat embolism to occur, two things must happen at once, fat must be injected inside the muscle and a gluteal vessel must be injured, opening a route into the venous system. If the fat never enters the muscle, that route does not exist.
That is why the plane changed, and why today’s data are different: a systematic review with meta-analysis published in Aesthetic Surgery Journal on ultrasound-guided gluteal fat grafting reported no deaths and no cases of fat embolism, with minor complications at 6.32%, seroma 2.94%, infection 0.23% and fat necrosis 0.09%. In a series of 1,815 patients with ultrasound guidance, complications were 4%, without embolism and without mortality. With implants the risks are different and we give them to you with numbers: the systematic review reports an overall complication rate of 21.6% with implants, compared with 9.9% with fat grafting. The most frequent is wound dehiscence at 9.6%, because of the incision’s location in the intergluteal crease, an area of tension and moisture. There is also seroma at 4.6%, infection at 1.9%, which may require implant removal, and transient sciatic paresthesias at 1.0%. That said, the same literature reports that satisfaction with implants is consistently high, and that intramuscular or submuscular placement, which is what we use, is safer.
Beyond aesthetics
it is an aesthetic procedure and we present it as such, without inventing functional benefits. What is real is the combined effect on the silhouette, because waist, back and buttock are addressed in the same procedure.
Myth vs reality
Myth
“Hip dips are fat or a lack of exercise.”
Reality
no. Lateral hip depressions depend on the shape of your pelvis and where muscles insert into bone. That is why no exercise eliminates them and it is not the fault of anything you did or did not do. Since the component is skeletal, the realistic goal is to soften the transition by filling the depression, not to erase it completely. Promising you they disappear would not be honest.
Book your consultation and we will explain the technique and safety in detail.
This consultation carries a fee, which is not credited toward treatment.
Advisory session with our teamComplimentary. We answer questions about process, estimated pricing and travel logistics.