Can Fat Injected at Temples Be Smoothed or Removed?

Aloha,

Sorry to hear about your misfortune with fat grafting.  Unfortunately all the "stroking" in the world will not help the bumps two years after your procedure.  Fat that is present 6 months after fat transfer is yours for the rest of your life.  And by all means, do not gain excessive weight or that fat will really pop out.  It takes either surgical removal, microliposuction, micro-laser lypolysis, or added other filler to hide the bumps to correct your problem.  Good luck and be well.

Dr. P

Fat transfer or fat grafting is a common procedure performed by plastic surgeons and usually has a high patient-satisfaction rate.  However, reabsorption of some fat or hard lumps can sometimes happen, especially in areas where the overlying skin is very thin such (as the temporal area).  Initially, treatment consists of massaging the lumps, but if there is not improvement after two years, revision fat grafting will usually correct this problem.  Revision fat grafting consists of redistributing the fat with small cannulas, possible liposuction with very small cannulas, and repeat fat grafting to areas of concavity. 

Jaime Perez M.D.

Fat Transfer Specialist, Tampa, Florida 

Plastic Surgery Center of Tampa

Hello - sorry to hear about your problem.

There are a couple of choices that occur to me:

1)  try to remove the fat, either through a direct incision (like a cyst removal), or thru liposuction

2)  try to melt the fat - steroid injection

3)  try to disguise the lump by layering other products nearby.

 

I'd start with #2.

 

Best wishes,

If your lumps are large then possibly small cannula liposuction may help but it probably won't remove it all and you will still have some lumpy irregularity. Excision may leaves scars and indentations, not to mention considerable temporary bruising. Injecting corticosteroid may thin the fat but has a risk of over thinning and creating changes in the coloration of the skin. There may be no perfect solution to your problem, so it may be worthwhile not treating all of them until a test area is treated with whichever modality and await its result prior to deciding if all should be treated that way.

These will need to be surgically removed by an experienced facelift surgeon. Usually these are surrounded with scar tissue and cannot be suctioned out,

Microcannula liposuction could perhaps be used to extract fat or at least cause significant distortion to soften the appearance of the lumps.