Smoking 3 weeks after facial fat grafting - will it damage results?

If you’re gonna stop smoking for three weeks then this sounds like an ideal time to not pick up to have it again.

Smoking has a detrimental effect on all tissues in your body and leads to a longer list of tissue disease than any other activity I can think of.
No one has shown that smoking reduces graft take but plastic surgeons do you know that a true mental effect nicotine can have in certain plastic surgery procedures especially ones where tissues are moved and blood supply is altered or compromised.

Revascularization of grafted soft tissues begins around the 3rd to 5th day after tissue grafting and continues to increase its vigor from there on. By three weeks all grafted fat it’s either dead or has an active blood supply.

Currently there are more women than men attending medical school and gender biases and medicine have pretty much been eliminated.

There are plenty of very talented plastic surgeons who happen to be women as well.

Best,

Mats Hagstrom, MD

It takes a while for the grafted fat to be vascularized and smoking slows this process by reducing blood supply to the area. Therefore, you need to refrain from smoking as long as possible and, preferably, for 4 months, which is how long it takes the fat to be totally incorporated. You also need to stop smoking at least several weeks before the procedure.