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- "Will My Face Get Fat?" Your Popular Fat Transfer Questions Answered
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Fat grafting has really moved the ball forward in how we can help people not just with rejuvenating and enhancing the breast but also with the buttocks as well as the face. Fat has many properties which not only allow us to increase volume but also allow us to improve the quality, tone, and texture of the skin, improve the appearance of scars, or for people who have had radiation therapy help the quality of their skin as well. There are many things that have to be considered and discussed in advance. For example, you want to be at your ideal body weight before doing fat transfer, because fat will behave like it did from the donor site. If it was taken from the belly and put into the breast, and if you gain weight, and you normally gain weight in the belly, then the fat that was moved from the belly to the breast will behave like it did when it was in the belly and expand.
Fat when it is transferred has to attach to a new blood supply. Not all the fat that's transferred or grafted will live. The fat that does not attach to a new blood supply will be resorbed. The fat that does live will live forever, so it is important that it be placed properly. You want to use a technique which deposits very small amounts at the appropriate levels and then builds up the volume so that you get an aesthetically pleasing result.
That really depends on many different factors. It depends on your diet, exercise, genetics, and other medical issues. In general, the fat that's transferred should behave in a similar fashion to the way it would naturally from its donor site.
Not everybody is a candidate for fat grafting. If someone is extremely skinny and doesn't have a lot of extra body fat, it's not going to be possible to get enough body fat from one location or even a combination of locations to be able to put it all together in one other location. For example, taking fat from the abdomen, the hips, the thighs, and then moving it to the buttocks or moving it into the breast, you may not have enough if someone is very petite. I think that someone needs to have reasonable expectations about what's possible with fat grafting.
We generally don't encourage patients to gain weight solely to be able to fat graft. If, in fact, somebody desires fat grafting, the amount of weight they would have to gain would usually be significant in order to be able to get enough fat to have the volume adequate if they're starting with virtually no donor sites. We don't encourage someone going on a cronut binge.
"Will My Face Get Fat?" Your Popular Fat Transfer Questions Answered
Fat grafting is still a relatively new treatment that comes with a lot of questions. Dr. Adam Schaffner answers several popular queries surrounding this interesting procedure.