Do you think about enlarging your breasts or enhancing your butt? You can do that and achieve a slim, shapely body at the same time if you choose fat grafting, also called a fat transfer.
Fat grafting creates your best body shape by removing excess fat from your problem areas and transplanting it into the area you want to improve. At Plastic Surgery Specialists of Boca Raton, Rafael C. Cabrera, MD, FACS, combines today’s technology with artistic skill, using fat grafting to create the body you envision.
Here, we explore how fat grafting works and whether you’re a good candidate for this procedure.
On the surface, fat grafting sounds like a simple process. We use liposuction to remove fat cells from one place (often the abdomen, back, and thighs), and then inject the cells into your breasts, butt, face, hands, or other body areas you may want to enhance.
But there’s more to the process, especially when our goal is to give you exceptional results. We begin with gentle, careful liposuction, removing the fat to ensure smooth, shapely results as we contour that area.
Then we purify the fat, removing unwanted cellular debris and retaining only healthy fat cells. As soon as the cells are ready, we transfer them to the body area you want to augment.
We use a series of small injections when transplanting the fat. This approach creates the most attractive and natural-looking results because we can precisely control the amount of fat we inject.
The fat we transfer contains living cells capable of regenerating new blood vessels. As they establish a healthy blood supply, the fat cells thrive and take hold as natural living tissues in their new location.
Some of the fat cells die — that’s an expected outcome, and we plan for it — but we can also minimize cell loss by injecting platelet-rich plasma (PRP). The concentrated platelets in PRP promote new blood vessel production, reduce inflammation, and support healing and cellular repair.
Most people can safely have a fat graft, but there are two criteria you need to qualify for the procedure.
First, you must have excess body fat to use in the transfer. And second, you also need enough extra fat to produce the results you want. If we can’t harvest enough fat to create your desired breast or butt size, you’ll need to consider implants.
If you want to have a breast augmentation, we need to examine your breasts and make sure the surrounding skin and structures will support larger breasts.
We also consider several other criteria. The best candidates for a fat transfer should:
Smoking cigarettes, vaping, and using any product containing nicotine interferes with healing. Nicotine narrows the blood vessels, limiting the supply of blood and depriving tissues of the nutrients and oxygen they need to heal and survive.
Using nicotine in the weeks before and after any type of plastic surgery hinders healing and increases your risk of pain, infections, and tissue death. Nicotine has a substantial impact on fat transplants because it affects the ability of the cells to survive in their new location.
If you’d like to learn more about fat grafting and whether it’s a good option for you, call Plastic Surgery Specialists of Boca Raton or request a consultation online today.
