What to Expect After Facial Fat Grafting

Aging can cause loss of facial volume, and many people use dermal fillers to replace it. Unfortunately, dermal fillers are not permanent. If you prefer an all-natural way to add facial volume, you should consider facial fat grafting. This treatment uses your own fat to enhance your features and requires no touch-ups to maintain your results.

What is Facial Fat Grafting?

Facial fat grafting is a long-lasting way to restore lost facial volume or enhance your features. Unlike dermal fillers, this treatment uses your own fat instead of a lab-produced material. This procedure uses liposuction to transfer fat from a donor area to the face. It may also be called fat transfer or fat augmentation. Fat contains stem cells that allow fat cells to take up residence in a new location. Facial fat grafting can address areas such as lines and wrinkles, cheeks, under-eye areas, and lips. Your SAS surgeon can use facial fat grafting almost anywhere you can have dermal fillers.

How Does Facial Fat Grafting Work?

Facial fat grafting may take place under local anesthesia or with sedation. Your surgeon makes a few small incisions and inserts a liposuction cannula to break up and collect fat cells. Common areas for fat collection include the abdomen and thighs. These fat cells are prepared before your surgeon injects them into areas that need volume. Once injected, these fat cells establish a blood supply and act like the fat cells around them. Not all the injected cells will survive, so your surgeon will adjust the amount of fat so you end up with precisely the right amount of volume.

What to Expect After Facial Fat Grafting

Facial fat grafting involves two areas: the location where you had liposuction and the treated parts of the face. Both will require some care after treatment but will heal quickly. Your team will review the steps of your recovery before and after your procedure.

Recovery

After treatment, you can expect soreness, swelling, or bruising in the liposuction area. The injected areas may feel swollen and sore. Depending on their recovery, most people will need up to a week off work. You should limit strenuous activities until your surgeon gives you permission to restart them. You will receive specific instructions with details on how to treat your liposuction incisions and the other treatment areas. Part of recovery is protecting the transferred fat cells while they graft.

Results

You can see results immediately after fat transfer. Swelling can make the area look fuller than your final results, so you may need several months to see the subtle, natural enhancement you desire. Once transferred, your new fat can last a lifetime. The cells will expand or shrink if you gain or lose weight. Facial fat grafting cannot prevent signs of aging, such as increased skin laxity.

What Can Facial Fat Grafting Treat?

Fat transfer is used on many areas of the face and body to provide enhancement. In the facial area, popular areas for facial fat grafting include:

Hollow under-eye area
Cheeks that have lost volume
Chin enhancement
Hollow-looking temples
Lip plumping
Smoothing and defining the area around the mouth

Since most facial volume that is lost to aging is fat, replacing it with fat transfer offers the most natural way to restore it. People may also choose fat augmentation to boost areas like the lips or cheeks that benefit from more definition and fullness.

Should I Get Facial Fat Grafting or Dermal Fillers?

The primary advantage of facial fat grafting is how long it lasts. While you may go a year or two between dermal filler injections, fat transfer lasts the rest of your life. Some people prefer the temporary option of dermal fillers instead of committing to long-lasting results. Others prefer a maintenance-free option for volume enhancement.

People also like facial fat grafting because it requires no artificial or lab-produced materials. While the risk of a reaction to dermal fillers is extremely low, the chance of reacting to your own fat is almost zero. Facial fat grafting results look and feel natural and will change with your face as you age, so it never looks fake.

Am I a Good Candidate for Facial Fat Grafting?

Good candidates for facial fat grafting are healthy adults with reasonable expectations. Candidates should have enough fat to collect for transfer, which is not usually a concern with facial fat transfer unless you have very little body fat. You may not be a good candidate if you have certain medical conditions. Ideal candidates want to achieve natural-looking facial volume enhancement with lifelong results. Only a consultation can determine whether this treatment will achieve the results you desire.

Take the Next Step – Request a Consultation

Want to learn more about facial fat grafting? Schedule your consultation online or by calling Specialty Aesthetic Surgery at (212) 737-8700. We look forward to working with you!

Specialty Aesthetic Surgery serves the greater NYC metro area.

About Our Surgeons

Bruce Moskowitz is an experienced oculoplastic surgeon. His practice encompasses all areas of oculoplastic cosmetic and reconstructive surgery. He has a well-known reputation for revision surgery, and a large portion of his practice comes from other colleagues to revise sub-optimal outcomes.

Grigoriy Mashkevich is an experienced and double-board certified facial plastic surgeon. He belongs to a highly select group of surgeons with a focused specialization in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery of the nose, face, and neck.

Dr. Anna Frants is a board-certified facial plastic surgeon who is experienced in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery. Her areas of surgical specialty include the face, neck, nose, eyelids, eyebrows, and ears.

*Individual results may vary.