Facial Fat Grafting Surgery | Houston, TX
While having an excess of fat in many areas of the body can lead to a disproportionate and aged appearance, facial fat is actually one of the factors that contributes to a youthful appearance. Unfortunately, aging, weight fluctuations, and heredity often cause facial fat to diminish, which can leave you with sagging, wrinkles, hollowed features, and thin lips.
Facial Fat Grafting
Facial fat grafting provides a solution for sagging, wrinkling, and other displeasing side effects associated with changes.
Facial fat grafting is a two-step process that removes unwanted fat from the abdomen, thighs, or hips and uses it to replace the lost volume in the face. The transfer of this fat fills in wrinkles around the nose and mouth, on the forehead, and around the eyes, as well as plumping cheeks and lips that have thinned with time. Facial fat grafting allows you to make good use of the fat you don’t want in order to attain a rejuvenated and natural-looking fullness in the face.
Facial Fat Grafting Candidates
You might be a good candidate for facial fat grafting if you desire to improve facial wrinkles, creases, hollowed cheeks, thin lips, and a loss of facial fullness by attaining the following aesthetic results:
Smoother skin with fewer wrinkles
Fuller cheeks and/or lips
Slimmer, more toned abdomen, hips, or thighs
Candidates should be in good general health and not smoke. They should also have realistic expectations of their results. Since this procedure makes use of fat taken from your body, you must have enough fat elsewhere that can be removed for grafting.
Facial Fat Grafting Procedure
Facial fat grafting is performed under anesthesia to prevent any pain or discomfort during the treatment. To begin, fat is removed from the donor area, such as the abdomen, hips, or thighs, with a small liposuction cannula. This fat is then purified before it is injected into the desired area of the face. Most patients only require a single fat grafting session to reach optimal results.
Recovery
Facial fat grafting is an outpatient procedure; however, you are required to have a driver present as this procedure does use anesthesia. Bandages will be placed over both the extraction and injection sites to reduce post-treatment swelling and increase blood circulation. Bruising, swelling, and discomfort are common following this procedure, and oral pain medication eases any lingering pain. You can return to your day-to-day activities soon after your treatment; however, you should temporarily refrain from strenuous exercise according to Dr. Patronella’s instructions.
Results
The outcome of your facial fat grafting procedure will be more noticeable once the swelling subsides. Since some of the transferred fat cells will not survive after the injection, Dr. Patronella often “overfills” the area to ensure that the proper amount of fat will remain. This overfilling will decrease over the following weeks and months. Once the swelling and bruising have subsided, you can enjoy the results: a more youthful and rejuvenated facial appearance.
