Fat transfer after a deep plane facelift?

Something wrong? yes there is, you can get blind, do research about blindness events and necrosis of tissues after facial fillers, also fat ones.

Not a good choice; besides the risks, you'd get a blowfish face, nobody wants that, fat transfers do NOT rejuvenate or remove any wrinkling or sagginess; also the fat is massively dissolved after months and some oily cyts may persist as a problem.

There’s no problem with doing the lift and then doing fat transfer later. There are advantages to doing it that way. There is a new baseline appearance after you’ve healed from the facelift and therefore less variables. A specific endpoint is potentially more achievable. Less complications when procedures are performed at different times. The downside is that it’s two procedures. You may also desire more volume in your face when analyzing your facelift results. We can discuss all of this during a consult if you’d like.

Fat grafting can be performed alongside facelift or afterwards. The benefit of combining surgeries is having only 1 recovery perior. You may find that fat grafting at the time of surgery adds to post-operative swelling and bruising but will not significantly impact recovery time or increase pain. Good luck!

Thanks for the question. No, there is no issue with getting fat transfer at a later time. In fact, this may be beneficial to allow the tissues to heal and reassess where the volume is and needs to be filled. The majority of patients do it at the same time as the facelift given only one recovery / cost.

The vast majority of people have their fat grafting and their facelift done at the same time. It allows for one anesthesia and one recovery and does not increase the level of discomfort nor elongate the recovery time. Combining these procedures would also help you to minimize your cost. Speak with your plastic surgeon about this.

Fat grafting may be performed at the same time or after a deep plane facelift. Combining fat transfer with facelift may give more swelling.
After the facelift, would wait at least 6 months for the postoperative swelling to subside prior to fat transfer. Fat grafting may be performed under local anesthesia.

There is not anything wrong with getting the fat transfer afterward other than you would want to make sure you're fully healed from the facelift before going in. But... it literally doesn't add any much more pain or recovery to the facelift at all. Fat transfer can be done completely awake under local anesthetic alone and is similar to getting filler. A deep plane facelift is SO much more than that!!! So it basically is like adding a drop of water to a bucket.

Thank you for your question. Fat transfer can be done during your deep plane facelift or later. It does not create more pain, but you can have swelling for a longer time. Fat transfer later, after you are healed can be done under local anesthesia, and there's no discomfort. The donor site might be sore for a few days.

You can certainly get a fat transfer later - that's not going to be a big problem in most cases. You can also do it at the same time and you really shouldn't have any problem with a longer or more difficult recovery.

Facial fat grafting shouldn't increase any pain after the surgery but it will cause a bit of a longer recovery time. However, if you choose to have the fat grafting after a deep plane facelift, your total recovery time will be longer since you will have to recover for the deep plane facelift (about a week, looking really good in two weeks) AND the fat grafting by itself (closer to two weeks before the swelling is down enough to look natural). If you do the two together, the fat grafting is the longer downtime so your total is about two weeks instead of three plus if you do them separately.

Andrew Campbell, M.D.
Facial Rejuvenation Specialist