For many years, surgical facial rejuvenation treatments centered primarily around restoring firmness to sagging skin and its underlying tissues. While this accomplished the goal of smoothing out wrinkles and lifting drooping facial features, this approach by itself could lead to an artificially taut appearance. The discovery of the important role fat plays in creating a youthful facial look brought to light a key element missing from traditional facial rejuvenation plans: restoration of facial fullness.As the face ages, it develops an aged appearance due to three key reasons:
- The face loses both bone and fat volume with age. The loss of this underlying stuctural support contributes to sagging skin and also leads to flattened cheeks and hollowness in the temples and around the eyes.
- The skin and its underlying tissues began to sag and lose firmness, resulting in characteristics such as wrinkles, jowls, and drooping of the eyelids and brows.
- Skin changes. It becomes thinner, And the effects of sun exposure and environmental pollutants become more apparent, causing the complexion to become blotchier and rougher. Compare the difference between the skin on the face, neck, decollete, and hands to unexposed areas such as the abdomen. The skin of the covered areas is noticeably softer, smoother, evenly-toned, and youthful-looking.
For these reasons, ACPS surgeons typically take a multi-dimensional approach to target all aging characteristics, combining surgical and nonsurgical treaments such as fat grafting, laser skin treatments to improve the skin, and facelift and necklift surgery to restore a smooth, softly firm and uplifted appearance to the face and neck.
Benefits of Facial Fat Grafting
Facial fat grafting offers several attractive benefits. One of the greatest? Patients receive both facial rejuvenation and body contouring in one procedure. During the initial plastic surgery consultation, the surgeon and patient together determine the areas where contour improvement is desirable. During the fat grafting procedure, the excess fat is harvested from these regions using liposuction, then injected into the areas of the face restore volume andThis is typically from areas where stubborn fat pockets reside such as the abdomen, waist, thighs and back where bra rolls are a concern for many women. In this way, bot
This ACPS surgeon Dr. Henry Mentz says, “Using your own fat is a great strategy for facial rejuvenation and body contour refinement because it’s durable, changes with you, and stays where you put it. About a tablespoon of fat is typically all that is needed to restore youthful suppleness to these regions and areas around the mouth.”
Future Science
Does fat grafting improve skin quality?
Beyond fat grafting’s advantages as a contouring tool, much scientific research currently surrounds its potential to improve the overlying skin quality of the face, hands, and in tissues that have been damaged with scar tissue from reconstruction and radiation. Dr. German Newall said, “Though it has’t yet been proven scientifically, my patients and I have noticed an improvement in the skin quality of areas that receive fat grafting.
If you are interested in learning more about fat grafting and if it might be right for you, please contact us to schedule a consultation with one of the award-winning surgeons at The Aesthetic Center for Plastic Surgery.