What is Fat-Grafting? It is to transfer where fat is in excess to another place because anatomical reasons there or has been lost because of drastic weight reduction or aging. This procedure gives the patient at the same time a significant rejuvenation in the area treated, transforming its appearance markedly, returning lost volumes and correcting the lines of aging. Fat transfer is being used in cosmetic plastic surgery to:

• Buttocks Augmentation - Fat Injections - Fat Grafting
• Smooth and repair aged hands
• Fill wrinkled, creased faces
• Create more shapely, curvaceous buttocks
• Enlarge breasts
• Fat grafting to the calves
• Lip Augmentation
• Cheek and chin implants
• Repair of inverted nipples
• Increasing the girth of the penis
• Enlarge genital Mayor Labials

A wrinkled, bony hand with large veins, sun spots and deep grooves can reveal an advanced age even though the patient’s face, breasts or body have been surgically rejuvenated. A few practitioners use dermal fillers like Restylane and Juvederm but the longer lasting method seems to be fat transfer via injection which is reported to last for years.

Facial fat transfer

A liposuction technique is used to harvest the fat and prepare it for transfer. The fat is then injected into the desired portion of the face. When using a micro injection technique, extremely small parcels of fat are placed into multiple layers of the face. The procedure is most commonly performed under local anesthesia with a light oral sedation.

The most common facial locations for fat transfer include:

Lip augmentation

Lipstick lines, smokers’ lines, marionette lines, but lip lines are a cosmetic red flag that brand you as deeply as they are carved into your skin. And while there are tons of products that claim to fill in those crepe-like wrinkles, these surface solutions are usually not enough to recapture lips of youth. Fortunately, there are solutions like the fat grafting to the lips to reduce or eliminate vertical lip lines by replacing some of the volume that has been lost.

The surgeon inject fat from the donor site and gently works them into the upper and lower lips for a plumping effect that is reported to be safer, softer and more natural than lip augmentation with popular injectable facial fillers like Restylane or filler materials like medical Gore-Tex or, e-PTFE (polytetrafluorethylene) as the material is known to doctors.

Buttocks augmentation via fat injections

There are two ways to plump the buttocks: Fat Transfer is one approach and the other is silicone implants. Many women and a growing number of men want a curvier, rounder and shapelier rear end. While thin patients must opt for insertion of special buttocks implants to fill out their derrière, patients who can spare the fat can undergo fat injection in a surgical procedure known as gluteoplasty or butt lift. Most patients prefer using their own fat to add volume, shape and projection to their buttocks, because there is the added slimming of their waist, back or thighs.

Working through small incisions in each gluteal cheek, the surgeon places fat cells at dozens of levels through the patient’s rear. After the procedure, the patient must wear a compression garment for about six weeks and sleep on the stomach for about a week. In most cases, non-athletic activities and driving can be resumed in about five days. A more youthful, rounded, taut, and perky derriere can be created under this technique. Besides an “ideal butt projection”, the saggy skin and cellulite of the butt area can improve or be eliminated.

The amount of fat you can have transferred from donor site to your buttocks will depend on your individual aesthetic goals:

•Re-shaped Butt Augmentation: Round, small, cute: < 400 cc of fat.

•Brazilian Butt Augmentation: Regular, cheek shape, great: > 401 cc to 600 cc of fat.

•Full Moon Butt Augmentation: Big, full moon shape: > 601 cc of fat.

There is very little discomfort, which is easily handled by Acetaminophen. Patients are able to sit shortly after buttock augmentation surgery and typically return to work within days.

Breast augmentation via fat grafting

Au Natural! Using your own fat to increase breast size is just one of the growing trends in cosmetic surgery. Autologous adipose tissue transplantation has been used for breast augmentation for cosmetic reasons and after breast cancer surgery. It is a minimally invasive procedure an alternative to breast augmentation using breast implants and to avoid putting foreign material in their breast.

In Weston Fat grafting to female breasts can be performed for cosmetic reasons, breast augmentation, or to correct breast asymmetry. Many breast augmentation patients have joked that if they could magically shift fat from one area of their bodies to another, implants wouldn’t be necessary. Little do they know that scientists are to breakthroughs in fat-derived, adult stem cell therapy that will not only revolutionize plastic surgery, but also carry the potential to reshape medical care in general.

Autologous, fat-derived adult stem cells – “mature” cells re-introduced into the same body, as opposed to embryonic stem cells used as an allograft – are showing tremendous plastic surgery-related outcomes for such applications as post-mastectomy breast reconstruction, aesthetic breast augmentation and cosmetic hand rejuvenation, as well as the repair of wounds, scars, burns and radiation-damaged skin.

The procedure is done as outpatient, often under local anesthesia and sedation, and has minimal recovery time. Unlike traditional methods, it involves no incisions, no new scars or foreign objects, yet it recreates an entire, natural feeling breast. Fat is then removed from one area of the body and meticulously injected it back as hundreds of tiny individual droplets in the breast site. These micro-fat transfers (autologous grafts) are harvested by gentle liposuction from the thighs, buttocks and stomach–wherever there is fat to spare. Even skinny patients do extremely well with this procedure.

Correcting asymmetrical breasts

Up to 25% of women's breasts display a persistent, visible breast asymmetry which is defined as differing in size by at least one cup size. Ten percent are severely different, with the left breast being larger in 62% of cases. Augmentation results: The beauty of it is no incisions, no scars, and all natural results. Fat grafting is a safe procedure in select cases; and that results are dependent on a surgeon's technique and expertise. Indications for fat grafting included: Micromastia; post-breast augmentation deformity, with or without removal of implant; Tuberous breasts; post-mastectomy deformity; deficits caused by conservative treatment or reconstruction with implants and/or flaps; damaged tissue resulting from radiotherapy and nipple reconstruction.

Results

Because the surgeon usually must inject too much fat to allow for reabsortion, the overcorrection can make the patient’s face look too plump or swollen for about a week. However, many patients are able to return to their normal activities immediately. Most notice some bruising, swelling, and redness in the donor and injection sites. Results from patients, physicians, and other researchers place the durability of fat injections anywhere from half a year up to eight years.

Potential risks and side effects

Fat transfer remains controversial although many plastic, dermatology and cosmetic surgeons offer various fat transfer procedures to their patients because the procedure is so well received by patients. Potential risks of any fat transfer include bleeding or hematoma, (a pool of blood forming under the skin), infection.

Sometimes, fluid collection, or seroma, around a surgical wound happens. While all are normally easily controlled and healed, more serious complications can arise.

Overall, the survival of injected fat seems to depend on how the physician harvests the donor fat, the technique used to treat the fat and how the prepared fat cells are put back into the patient and the site to which the fat was moved. The issue of survivability seems most affected by where in the body the fat is transferred, how much that site moves, how muscular it is and if disease is present.

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