Fat Grafting Seminar Information from Dr. Scott Thompson, Utah Facial Plastic Surgeon
Let me give you a bit more information on fat grafting.This has been a relatively more recent advance in the world of facial rejuvenation and it’s become a lot better over recent years. It wasn’t part of my training 10 or 12 years ago and is something I’ve added to my practice over time. One of the great things about our specialty is that it continues to advance and there’s a lot happening. It’s all very exciting.
The results with fat grafting are long lasting and better than fillers. The results are permanent and we can inject all around the face, the eyes, the nasolabial folds, the cheeks and some of those areas I was showing you before. We can take the fat from either the thigh or the abdomen. Those are kind of the more common areas we take the fat for grafting. And if you’re really thin, we have to take it from different areas to try to get enough fat to graft.
The fat is harvested through a canula just going under the skin back and forth and pulling that fat out. Then it’s processed and washed with blood and oil components removed and then it’s injected as seen in the above right photo.through a small needle whole in the face so there’s no stitches or anything. The fat is injected just like a filler.
Here are a couple of pictures of fat injections with facelift. Here is one before and after photo of just peri-orbital fat injections. A lot of young people come in my office and have this look of bags under the eyes and sometimes they think they need a lower blepharoplasty or lower eyelid surgery. A lot of times it’s not the case, it’s just hollow and they need volume and we can do that with fillers. Fat is probably a better choice because it not only fills in the volume but helps with the color as well. The one downside of fat is that it doesn’t survive 100% so we usually have to put about twice as much in than we want and hope about half of it will survive. Sometimes less than half survive so I always tell people that we might have to supplement this with a little filler or we might want to do a second fat grafting procedure down the road.
People are always concerned, as I am, about having too much fat there and that’s not ever been a problem in my practice. I have seen people who come in after get fat grafting procedures from other places where the fat is visible and it’s almost always that they’ve had multiple procedures and I sometimes wonder about the placement of the fat as well. That is a problem we don’t want to have because that is difficult to deal with if we have to.
One of my plastic surgery colleagues caught me in the hall the other day and she knows I do a lot of fat grafting. She said she read an article about people who had had fat grafting and in some cases gained 30 or 40 pounds later and that fat expanded. So it’s important that if you’re going to do something like this that you maintain basic health and hopefully don’t gain too much weight.
This is something that can be done in the office. It’s a little difficult to numb the area in the office enough to get the fat out but I’ve gotten better at it over the years. Usually I can do that in the office and Dr. Henstrom as well.
For more information on fat grafting, call (801) 776-2220 or contact us HERE.