Today, medicine considers facial fat grafting a typical procedure. In this surgery that improves facial volume, instead of temporary dermal fillers, the surgeon uses fat from the patient’s own body to restore volume loss. Using liposuction, the doctor removes fat from one area of the body. This fat goes through a cleaning process to ensure only whole, undamaged fat cells remain. Finally, the doctor injects the fat into the face at key points to reshape it.
Plastic surgeons most frequently use this procedure to address cosmetic needs. Facial fat grafting can address:
- Cheek hollows
- Forehead wrinkles
- Marionette lines
- Sunken eyes
- Lip volume loss.
Although it offers a permanent alternative to temporary facial fillers like Botox, it has more far-reaching implications. One of these applications occurred in 2013, when Dr. Joel Aronowitz successfully combined the treatment with stem cell treatments to restore the face of a cancer survivor.
Unique Applications of Facial Fat Grafting
When Marissa, then 31 years old, visited Joel Aronowitz MD in 2013, she didn’t want to undergo more surgery. She told Real Self she’d given up. She’d survived bilateral retinoblastoma, a cancer of the retina, which she had developed as an infant. The radiation treatments she had when 17 months old saved her life but had also destroyed part of her face. The temple area of her head experienced extensive bone, muscle, and tissue damage. After a ten-year battle with cancer, she beat it. She then embarked on another ten-year journey to reconstruct her face.
Between her cancer fight and her journey to reconstruct her face, she underwent 70 surgeries before visiting Dr. Aronowitz with her mother. Marissa had undergone two failed surgeries to correct the problems at her temples and her forehead. Radiation had damaged the facial muscles, so Dr. Aronowitz used stem cell injections to the temple area to improve the blood flow and facial fat grafting “to fill out the hollowed crevasses.” Marissa said, “The surgery was a success, and in the 9 months since my surgery, I have done two additional procedures with Dr. Aronowitz.”
Gutsy Patients and Pioneering Surgical Applications
By 2020, according to Clinics in Plastic Surgery, using fat from other areas of the body as a facial filler applied to craniofacial reconstruction and secondary facial deformity had become accepted practice. It still receives less press than the cosmetic surgery applications of erasing the signs of aging, but the same technique helps to reconstruct injured faces. Consult a board-certified plastic surgeon to find out if facial fat grafting, alone or combined with other treatments, could help you achieve the results you want.
