Dr Michael Kaplan - Missouri Facial Fat Grafting

Facial fat grafting is a popular cosmetic surgery that helps restore a youthful look to a woman's face, allowing for less stress lines and wrinkles. This adds fullness by filling the deep nasolabial folds, lower eyelid hollows, forehead wrinkles, and frown lines. Often, a facial fat graft is a good substitute over a facelift because it offers less discomfort and minimal recovery time. A facelift may produce a stretched-out or "mask like" look, whereas fat grafting adds facial volume and fullness leading to a more youthful appearance.

Facial grafting can be done under sedation or using general anesthesia depending on the patient's needs. The procedure begins with the use of unwanted thigh or abdominal fat being liposuctioned out, then cleaned and processed to ensure survivability. This fat is then injected into the deep hollows of the face or eyelids, or wherever necessary.

Liposuction has made fat grafting an easier process and has opened the door to various possibilities and sources for injection. Patients like the idea that they are using their own tissue rather than a foreign or synthetic substance for cosmetic rejuvination of the face, especially since the face is the most sensitive and obvious part of a person's looks. Fat grafting is also called fat transfer, fat autographs, autologous fat transplantation, fat injecting, or microlipoinjections, and is also used for breast enlargement, buttox shaping, and repairing wrinkled hands.

The common procedures of facial fat grafting begins with fat being withdrawn by either a syringe or a liposuction cannula. The fat is then prepared and injected into the face where desired. The preparation of the fat is important as it cleans it of blood and other unwanted substances that could cause infections or other negative side effects. The most common sought-after facial fat injections are the filling in of sunken areas beneath the eyes, fleshing out the folds of skin known as the nasolabial folds, "laugh lines", filling in forehead creases, and cheek augmentation. All of these take years off of a person's age and help revive the look and feeling of youth.