Breast implant
Since the late nineteenth century, breast implants have been used to surgically augment the size (volume), modify the shape (contour), and enhance the feel (tact) of a woman's breasts. In 1895, surgeon Vincenz Czerny effected the earliest breast implant emplacement when he used the patient's autologous adipose tissue, harvested from a benign lumbar lipoma, to repair the asymmetry of the breast from which he had removed a tumor. In 1889, surgeon Robert Gersuny experimented with paraffin injections, with disastrous results.
Trans-umbilical breast augmentation
A trans-umbilical breast augmentation is a breast prosthesis insertion technique wherein the incision is at the umbilicus (navel), which dissection then tunnels superiorly, to facilitate emplacing the breast prosthesis to the implant pocket without producing visible surgical scars upon the breast hemisphere; but it makes appropriate dissection and device-emplacement more technically difficult. A TUBA procedure is performed bluntly (without endoscopic assistance), and is inapplicable to emplacing (pre-filled) silicone-gel implants, because of the great potential for damaging the elastomer silicone shell of the breast-implant device during its manual insertion through the short, two-centimetre (~2.0 cm), incision at the navel, and because pre-filled silicone-gel implants are incompressible, and cannot be inserted through so small an incision.