How do you decide between sculptra and fat grafting?

Medical decisions are best made together with your provider. If you don’t have a provider and find someone who is reputable and experienced in the field and discuss the procedures in detail with him or her and have that person help you decide.

Unless the pros and cons have been properly been presented to you by people with years of experience patients should not be making medical decisions on their own.

The procedures are very different. I typically would approach facial fat transfer with a great deal of caution because the procedure is somewhat unpredictable, imprecise and can be unforgiving if patients don’t like the results.

Best,

Mats Hagstrom MD

To an expert this is an easy question. However, you will get varied answers depending on who you ask. Fat grafting may take more than 1 session, but Sculptra, to achieve similar results, requires multiple sessions and it lasts only a few years, where fat is essentially permanent. A reason for some of the varied opinions is that Sculptra is more frequently injected by non plastic surgeons. Even among plastic surgeons, there is a difference in knowledge and skill of fat grafting. In expert hands, at least 75% of the injected fat takes and is permanent and there are rarely contour problems or complications. I gave up Sculptra many years ago and use only long lasting fillers or fat that have immediate results.