My best guess is that fat transfer will not have any impact on your back pathology.Of all the things to be concerned about that is probably relatively low on the list of real issues that happened on a regular basis.The first step would be to assess your candidacy for the procedure and the second would be to begin the process of finding providers who have sufficient skill and experience to deliver consistent quality outcomes.This alone is a fairly major hurdle.Not everybody seeking a fat transfer is a good candidate for the procedure.Likewise, the number of plastic surgeons who approach mastery of this kind of work is relatively small.I recommend you start the process by first getting a complete set of body pictures, the same way plastic surgeons take before and after pictures.Use pictures of your body as reference during consultations and whenever reviewing before, and after pictures.Next schedule multiple in person consultations with plastic surgeons in your community who seem to have extensive experience with these procedures.Bring Pictures of your body to use as a reference during the consult.During each consultation, ask each provider to open up their portfolio and show you their entire collection of before and after pictures of previous patients who had the most similar body characteristics to your own. Simply the ability to understand your candidacy for the procedure is a fairly complex topic.There are many variables to take the consideration, including age, the degree of skin laxity potential pregnancy related changes, thickness of subcutaneous, fat, visceral, fat, fat, distribution issues, etc., etc., etc. Take careful notes during each consultation, especially regarding the quality and quantity of before and after pictures.Next recognize that early fat trans results can look very impressive but do not in anyway represent final results.Whenever assessing the outcome of a fat transfer procedure. You always need to do that in context to when the pictures were taken in regards to the time of the operation.Pictures taken less than three months from the date of surgery should not be considered representative and our most likely over enthusiastic in regards to what the actual results will look like. There’s no correct number of consultations needed to find the right provider for your needs.The more consultations you schedule the more likely you are to find a better provider for your procedure.Considering how much variation there is in both skill and experience for both Liposuction and fat transfer I recommend patient consider having at least four or five consultations before even considering selecting a provider for permanent irreversible body contouring procedures that have the potential of leaving people disfigured.I’ve never read anything published about back pain related to either Liposuction or fat trans so that in my opinion, it would be pretty low on the list of things to be concerned about.In the end, understanding your candidacy and provider selection are the two variables that are going to determine if having this procedure is going to be a good decision or not.There are of course other variables, but 95% of patients who are either happy or unhappy with the outcome of these procedures can be broken down to issues related to candidacy and provider selection.This satisfaction is not uncommon with liposuction and fat transfer.When patients are disappointed, the problem is almost always related to provider selection, poor candidacy, or a combination of both.There isn’t much patience, can do regarding their own candidacy.That said understanding your candidacy can help establish clear expectations of what the procedure can and cannot accomplish before you decide to have surgery.What patients do you have control over is provider selection.Ultimately surgeon responsible for this Surgical outcome, but patience are in the end responsible for provider selection.There is more difference in provider selection for these procedures than most people recognize.Being born certified and plastic surgery with a handful of good reviews and a decade of experience does not mean somebody has mastered Liposuction, fat or is even good at these procedures.Finding the right provider is far more complex and difficult than most people realize and reality most patients are not good at selecting plastic surgeons.Many people think they can find the right provider using their computer or cell phone.This is again one of the biggest mistakes patient make.There is in reality very little quality neutral information about these procedures or providers available on the Internet.Almost everything posted is biased towards selling you something or someone.I don’t want to come across as being too pessimistic, but I worry about people making poor decisions ending up with lifetime disappointments.This is all avoidable by taking an intelligent active approach to the process of having cosmetic surgery.There’s a lot of misinformation out there so learning to decipher between what’s real and what’s not does require some insight.When in doubt, slow down and schedule more in person consultations.You may or you may not be a good candidate for these procedures.Without pictures we can’t begin to make an assessment.Best,Mats Hagstrom MD
