Dr. Lisa Cassileth, MD, FACS

Dr. Lisa Cassileth trained at the University of Pennsylvania and completed her plastic surgery fellowship with a focus on breast reconstruction. She became the first female Chief of Plastic Surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a position she held for two consecutive terms.

During her time there, she cared for a high volume of complex breast reconstruction patients and began to see that many women were undergoing a prolonged and often uncomfortable process with tissue expanders and multiple surgeries, steps that were not always required to achieve an optimal result. In many cases, a more direct approach could not only simplify the process but produce results that feel more natural and more closely reflect the patient's original breast.

In response, Dr. Cassileth pioneered Direct-to-Implant breast reconstruction in 2012. The technique allows patients to wake up from mastectomy with their breasts already reconstructed in a single operation, avoiding tissue expanders and additional surgeries. She began developing the approach at Cedars-Sinai and has continued to refine it over more than two decades of dedicated practice.

Working with her colleague Dr. Heather Richardson, Dr. Cassileth developed the SWIM Flap in 2020. The technique uses the patient's own local tissue to reconstruct the breast while preserving muscle function, offering a less invasive alternative for appropriately selected patients. It was developed for women who are not ideal candidates for Direct-to-Implant reconstruction, or who prefer to avoid implants altogether, including patients with excess skin following mastectomy. For these patients, traditional flap procedures often required sacrificing major muscle, which could lead to donor-site weakness and a prolonged recovery. Their outcomes were published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

In her aesthetic practice, Dr. Cassileth also observed that many breast lift techniques relied heavily on skin tension and breast tissue suturing, leading to recurrent sagging over time. In response, she developed the Pocket Lift, which restructures the internal breast tissue to provide support from within, allowing the breast to maintain its position more reliably rather than depending on skin that will inevitably stretch.

Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, and reflects a consistent approach: identifying where existing methods fall short for patients, and developing more thoughtful, durable solutions in response.