Unfortunately, your experience bears out the disappointing experience that many of us have had with fat grafting. Although there continues to be a great deal of hype surrounding it, fat grafting is certainly nothing new and has been around for decades. In fact, I stopped performing it twenty years ago when newer and more advanced fillers and volumizing agents began to appear on the scene. Certainly nowadays, with all the natural, more advanced fillers and volumizing agents that are FDA approved and available off the shelf, there is not much justification for fat grafting in my opinion, which involves two invasive procedures, one to withdraw the fat from the hips, buttocks or abdomen, and the other, using large bore cannulas, to reinject it into the face--a process that often leads to quite a bit of post-procedural swelling and distortion that may last up to a couple of weeks..We once thought that using one's own fat was likely to result in long-lasting, if not permanent results. Clearly your experience, like so many others, indicates that this is not the case. Furthermore, the injected fat, if it does remain viable, may be subject to future weight gain or loss, which can lead to undesirable cosmetic effects. Likewise, if there are age-related changes in the regions around the fat grafts in the future, what might have appeared fine when first injected may then appear odd or displeasing. For these reasons, off the shelf, natural, hyaluronic acid products or calcium-based fillers have replaced fat entirely in my treatment regimens. So long as there is no current swelling or residual edema from your prior fat treatments, it is probably OK to go ahead with the use of fillers, but I would strongly urge consultation with a board certified aesthetic physician with experience and expertise in the field before doing so.
