Fat Grafting or Fat Injection — Cosmetic Surgery in Birmingham, Alabama

Fat grafting is also called free fat transfer, liposculpture, lipostructure, structural fat grafting and fat injections. This is a procedure which removes excess fat cells from one area of the body and then transfers the fat to where it is needed.

The advantage of fat grafting is that the fat comes from your own body, so you cannot develop an allergic reaction unlike other external implant substances that are introduced into the body. Your body naturally accepts the injected fat.

Fat grafting can been used for correcting or improving:

• Facial scarring, e.g., acne scars.
• Buttock hypoplasia with the Brazilian buttock lift procedure.
• Facial aging such as sunken cheeks and facial lines, either by itself or as an adjunct to cosmetic facial surgery.
• Aging of the hands.
• Thin lips with lip enhancement.
• Other areas of the body where there is a soft-tissue defect, e.g., fat atrophy after steroid injections.

Fat grafting may be performed at our facility on an outpatient basis. There are basically three parts to the procedure:

Harvest

• Prepare the site for removal of fat by injecting a local anesthetic and/or tumescent solution.
• Insert a cannula connected to a syringe through a small incision and carefully suck out fat.

Purification and Transfer

• Fat is then purified either by hand or mechanically to get fat cells for grafting.
• Prepare fat cells for transfer.

Placement

• Area for graft is prepared.
• A small cannula is inserted into the incision point of the site being augmented. Fat cells are then carefully injected into area.
• This is repeated until desired correction has been achieved.

A moderate amount of swelling is expected after the fat graft. This is usually evident for 2 weeks after the procedure. Some bruising may also be apparent. A percentage of the fat grafts are resorbed by the body and overcorrection may initially be evident. It is currently unknown what percentage of the fat grafts are ultimately resorbed, but modern techniques and instrumentation have decreased this percentage considerably over the past few years.

Please contact our Birmingham, Alabama office today if you would like to find out more about fat grafting performed by William Hedden, M.D.