Midface fat graft - No results after 1 year (photo)

Thank you for your photos. Without seeing a before photo, it is impossible to tell how successful your procedure was. A midface lift along with fat transfer may be a more powerful solution.

Hello, hope you are well. Fat grafting is one way to augment the cheeks, but there is some inherent unpredictability to the procedure that can be the source of issues like this. By comparison, cheek implants offer advantages in the sense that they are stable, highly reliable, and pre-formed in different shapes and sizes to fit most needs. Implants can be selected to 'lift' the cheeks as well as provide augmentation. Having said that, it's hard to provide advice on your best option (midface lift, implants, dermal filler, etc) without seeing a profile of your complete face and actually feeling the area and knowing more details about your exact aesthetic goals and constraints.
Best,Dr. Tower

To make a quality assessment regarding the outcome of any plastic surgery procedure we generally need to see a complete set of proper before and after pictures.
You don’t have before and after pictures, then ask your surgeon to forward the pictures they took.
Without knowing what you look like before the procedure, we can’t make an assessment regarding its outcome.
Have you had work done to your midface before? Fillers? Liposuction? There appears to be a wavy, slight contour irregularity.
I’m not sure what you were referring to when you say cheek lift? I’m generally not a big fan of facial fat transfer. The procedure is inherently, unpredictable, emphasize, and potentially unforgiving, if patients don’t like the outcome, though that tends to be the opposite when more survived than What is ideal.
Treatments should be recommended based on first having a good working understanding of what the underlying problem or ideology is.
Before prescribing an operation the surgeon needs to make an accurate diagnosis.
Making a quality assessment is complex and to do it after a procedure we need a full set of information, preferably including an in person consultation with an examination.
I generally recommend people stay with fillers, rather than fat transfer for volume augmentation in the face.
Unlike fat, transfer, fillers tend to be precise, predictable, and quite forgiving if patients don’t like the outcome.
In the end, the outcome of most plastic surgery procedures are based on the patients candidacy for the procedure in the first place and the second variable is the skill inexperience of the provider.
Finding the right plastic surgeon to work with is Probably the first and most important hurdle to tackle.
To do that, I suggest patient’s schedule multiple in person consultations with plastic surgeons in their community.
During each consultation, ask each provider to open up their portfolio and show you their entire collection of before, and after pictures of the previous patients who had similar characteristics and the procedure you are contemplating.
For fat transfer always make sure that after pictures were taken at least 3 to 6 months after the procedure was done.
Early fat transfer results can look very impressive but do not in any way represent final long-term results.
Never assume that after pictures represent long-term final outcomes.
Always confirm.
And experience plastic surgeon should have no difficulty showing you the before and after pictures of at least 50 previous patients for commonly performed procedures.
Being shown a handful of pre-selected images, representing only the best results of a providers career may be insufficient to get a clear understanding of what average results look like in the hands of each provider, what your results are likely to look like or how many of these procedures stay actually done.
There is a lot to take in consideration.
Best,
Mats Hagstrom, MD