How a Rise in GLP-1 Prescriptions Is Changing This Plastic Surgeon’s Job

22.09.2026, 18:18 allure.com

The inaugural season of Allure Perspectives will explore one of the most controversial and medically researched parts of a woman’s body: breasts. Through expert interviews, personal stories, and historical context, the podcast series, hosted by editor in chief Jessica Cruel, will examine how breasts intersect with beauty, health, identity, sexuality, and culture. In our fourth episode, Cruel talks with Beverly Hills-based plastic surgeon Lisa Cassileth, MD, about how GLP-1 drugs are changing breast surgeries, advances in implant technology, how AI chatbots are changing consultations, and more on the biggest boob job trends. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes every week.

Lisa Cassileth, MD, the first female chief of plastic surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and a renowned plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, says sentiments around breast implants tend to ping-pong between fear and excitement.

Fear tends to bubble up when stories about breast implant-associated ALCL (anaplastic large cell lymphoma) are circulating. “People hear about it, and they’re afraid, and so everyone starts to remove their implant,” Dr. Cassileth says. “Then, suddenly, Kylie Jenner gets a breast aug with 445 CCs and everyone’s like, ‘I want a breast aug with 445 CCs.’ The pendulum swings. We’ve gone through now, in my career, the third cycle of removal and excitement.”

Right now, we’re in a period of excitement, and Dr. Cassileth—known for her ability to fix botched boob jobs, her minimally invasive post-mastectomy reconstructions, and her focus on patient outcomes—has a front-row seat to it all. In the fourth episode of Perspectives, she shares stories about how GLP-1 drugs, artificial intelligence, and new advances in implant technology are changing patient outcomes.

The rise in the number of patients taking a GLP-1 drug—like Wegovy or Zepbound—is bringing people to Dr. Cassileth’s office. “[Patients] are losing 20, 30 pounds,” she says. “And it’s hitting them in the breast.”

The types of procedures have changed too. The number of requests she gets for breast reductions has gone down, while lifts are on the rise. After extreme weight loss, a patient’s breasts might be the size they want, “but [the volume] is in the wrong place,” Dr. Cassileth says. “You’ll have no breast [tissue] on the upper half and all the breast [tissue] is on the lower half.”

She explains that this is caused by excess, lax skin, which has also affected the actual technique she uses for these lifts. “The lifts used to rely on the skin being tightened,” Dr. Cassileth says. But “If you have skin that’s been stretched out… why would we rely on that skin? It’s already failed.”

Luckily, there have been technological advances in the form of absorbable mesh that can assist where the skin might not be able to. “The mesh holds the breast in position, but over time it dissolves and leaves scar tissue and collagen tissue where the body is replacing the mesh,” Dr. Cassileth says. This, she says, also allows her to create whatever shape the patient wants.

Like everything else in beauty, there are trends in breast shape. Right now, small, perky boobs are in, Dr. Cassileth says. Two types she says patients ask for by name are the ballerina boob (“a tiny bit of tissue just under the areola”) and the yoga boob (“a scoop with a droop,” basically avoiding any fullness at the top of the breast).

Dr. Cassileth says these won’t look natural on many people’s bodies, which she tries to explain during the consultation. “That size on you may not look like that size does on a celebrity or someone else,” she tells patients.

Recent advances in breast implant technology have made outcomes better for many of Dr. Cassileth’s patients. Take, for example, the Motiva implant, which won an Allure Best of Beauty Breakthrough Award in 2025 and has a far lower rate of capsular contracture (the formation of scar tissue around the implant that can make it feel hard or look unnatural). Motiva implants have what Dr. Cassileth calls a “nano texture” that lowers the risk of the body recognizing it as a foreign object and rejecting it.

“We used to tell people, ‘In 20 years, half the implants will be ruptured and in 10 years, at least 10 percent are ruptured’,” Dr. Cassileth says. Motivas have been out in Europe for over a decade with less than 1% rupture at 10 years, she says, meaning plastic surgeons no longer have to tell their patients to come back in 10 years. Now, she says, it’s more “start to watch the implant and see if it does anything.”

Dr. Cassileth says a lot of her patients are “asking Chat” (as in GPT) before they come in for a consultation so they know what questions to bring. “It’s making a better experience for them,” she says. But AI, Dr. Cassileth continues, doesn’t know everything and definitely isn’t perfect. For example, Dr. Cassileth uses AI-powered tools to realistically approximate what a procedure’s results will look like on a patient, but she doesn’t recommend patients try to do the same at home. “Patients used to bring in [inspiration] pictures that were, at worst, airbrushed,” Dr. Cassileth says. “Now they’re AI. You just say, ‘This is so far off from a realistic picture of what I can give you.’”

To hear the full interview with Dr. Cassileth—including her thoughts on the risks of fat transfer procedures like Alloclae, how mastectomy and reconstructive surgeons can collaborate to help breast cancer patients, and why there’s such a high satisfaction among breast reduction patients—listen to the episode below. (Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.)

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