Best Area to Take Fat from for Fat Transfer?

Hi there-

This would be individually variable, but in general, fat grafted from the areas of your body where it is the most "stubborn" and difficult for you to get rid of with exercise should be the most successful.

Successful fat transfers depend on 4 things:


Collecting the fat in a way that will keep most fat cells alive.

Processing the fat in a way that gets rid of unnecessary elements, such as dead cells or excess fluids.

Injecting the cells in a way that will optimize fat graft survival.

Protecting the cells after they have been injected.


At the 2010 IFATs conference, Dr. Coleman presented a paper which determined that some parts of the centrifuged fat contain higher numbers of stem cells. In particular, he quantified how after centrifugation of the fat, the middle part of the tube, known to plastic surgeons as the ‘fat cake,’ is not one single entity, but has two sections of fat in the tube. The bottom part of the fat cake has a higher density of stem cells than the top part. Additionally, Dr. Coleman concluded that the high density fractions of lipoaspirate are superior to the low density fractions in terms of fat survival.

So, basically, fat grafts with a higher population of adipose stem cells survive longer, regardless of which part of the body the fat is actually taken from.

The body has places where it prefers to store stubborn, or slow-burning, fat. This varies from individual to individual and those bulges of slow-burning fat give the figure its particular shape (whether it be an hourglass or a pear). Those areas can be hard to get rid of, even with diet and exercise so liposuction can specifically target those areas.

There's no one place that the best location to harvest fat for facial fat grafting. Ideally, the harvest location is easily accessible during the procedure whlie at the same time providing a plentiful source of fat. Many times this includes the abdomen, inner thighs or hips.

I like to ask patients what areas they feel have "stubborn" fat as this is often an indication that the fat will be less susceptible to weigh loss fluctuations.