As we age, there is a gradual loss of tissue volume that our bodies experience. This loss of fat tissue is in many areas of the body including face, buttocks, breasts, hands, and feet. This makes your physical appearance as weak and older. To resolve this problem of aging, fat grafting surgery is today a common cosmetic procedure many people go for today and relive their younger days. The surgery procedure works by taking fat from a donor site of the patient’s body and then the fat is reinjected to the required area of the body. This is known as fat grafting surgery procedure.
The procedure
The surgeon first sucks out the unwanted fat tissues from the donor area of the patient using liposuction technique. Such areas are usually abdomen, hips, buttocks, thighs, or love handles. The area is injected with the tumescent solution to provide pain relief and minimize bleeding. After the collection of enough fat, it is purified to remove the damaged cells. Only undamaged and whole fat cells are kept for the grafting.
As the final step, the surgeon re-injects the harvested and purified fat cells into the patient’s target body area using different needles. It is to be noted that around 50% of the injected or grafted fat will be absorbed into overtime. Hence, the surgeons add more fat cells volume than is expected.
However, not everyone can dream of undergoing this cosmetic grafting surgery. This is because for most people the surgery is expensive.
The cost
Fat grafting is an expensive technique. There are three costs involved. These are the surgeon’s fee, anesthesia fee, and the hospital’s facility fee. In addition, the surgeon’s skill and training, the location of the hospital plus the surgery technique also are the factors responsible for enhancing the cost.
Here is the list of 10 fat grafting surgeries that is expensive
#1. Breast
Fat transfer breast augmentation is the best option when it comes to providing natural-looking enlarged breasts, which are increased by one cup size. It takes only a smaller additional volume of fat cells to give a new youthful appearance to the lopsided look of your breast. Fat grafting gives more fullness to your breasts.
The surgeon will take fat from your waist and love handles, buttocks, or thighs, and even arms. The fat taken is only a pinchable amount. But it is an expensive cosmetic surgery.
#2. Buttocks
The buttocks fat grafting surgery is another expensive procedure. This requires putting some fat on the buttocks to give them fuller look and to lift them to provide a more youthful profile. Fat is removed from abdomen, love handles or inner thighs and is grafted to the desired areas on the buttocks. In this procedure, usually a larger quantity of fat is removed and grated. So, more than one donor areas are involved in the process.
#3. Face
Face is the area where the signs of aging are very obvious due to fast loss of fat volume that gives your face a youthful look. The volume loss is more around eyes, jawline, and cheeks. By fat transfer, cheeks, lips, temples, and other facial areas look youthful.
#4. Hands and feet
As we age, our hand skin, especially on the back, starts thinning out. This exposes veins, tendons, and bones. In addition to that, wrinkles start showing on the skin prominently.
To treat this, fat can be grafted from any donor part of the body such as abdomen. When fat is transferred to the desired are of hands and feet, they have more volumes and look youthful.
#5. Breast reconstruction
Breast reconstruction, known as autologous fat grafting is the technique used mainly for some cancer patients whose have some cancer in their breasts. This is known as lumpectomy or mastectomy procedure to restore the normal breast appearance. The surgeon uses the patient’s own fat tissues to rebuild breast once the cancer removal procedure from the breast is over.
#6. Ankle fat grafting
Your lower extremities, such as ankle particularly has a lower fat retention rate. However, ankles are among the recipient areas that have thinner subcutaneous fat layer. This means that the amount of fat required for grafting is lower in volume. Fat grafting is the only option left to make thinner ankle look bigger.
#7. Acne fat grafting
Acne scars are of a great concern because they leave horrible spots on face. These scars make the part of face look matted and unattractive. But acne fat grafting is the solution for this problem. The surgeon looks for the donor area on the patient’s body. Then fat is sucked using liposuction technique from the area.
As a next step, the surgeon injects the fat into the scarred area such as forehead, cheeks, chest etc. In this procedure, there is no need for putting the patients under anesthesia but tumescent solutions can be given to numb the area when liposuction process is going on.
#8. Post-Traumatic fat grafting
In some cases, due to trauma or surgery, some voids create unpleasant deformities in different part of the body. Sometimes it is because of muscle wasting due to neurosurgery that there is loss of fat volume in that body parts such as the trunk, skull, arms, and legs. In such cases, fat grafting is the solution to fill those body areas with fair amount of fat taken from the donor areas of the body.
#9. Natural breast lift
Some women have low breasts as they have lost fat volume due to pregnancy, weight fluctuation, or any other natural cause. In that case, natural breast lift is the right answer to solve this problem. The surgeon injects the fat taken from the donor area to the desired areas of the breasts. It provides some lift and gives fullness. But not all candidates are qualified for this breast lifting procedure.
#10. Stem cell fat grafting
The latest technology in fat grafting is stem cell fat grafting. This advanced surgery uses filtered pure fats and autologous stem cells. These cells are harvested from the patient’s own body. So, this technique is more effective because it uses autologous stem cell fat tissues instead of the old technique of using foreign implant such as silicon.
