Fat Transfer

Fat transfer, also known as fat grafting, is a versatile cosmetic procedure that uses your body’s own fat to enhance and contour specific areas. By removing excess fat from areas like the abdomen, thighs, or flanks through liposuction, and strategically transferring it to areas that need volume—such as the face, breasts, or buttocks—fat transfer creates natural-looking, long-lasting results. This dual-benefit procedure not only enhances your desired features but also slims and shapes donor areas for an overall balanced and refined appearance.

Benefits of Fat Transfer

Fat transfer, also known as fat grafting, offers a range of aesthetic and practical benefits, making it a popular choice for patients seeking natural enhancements. This innovative procedure not only reshapes the body but also provides long-lasting results using your body’s own fat, eliminating the need for synthetic implants or fillers.

1. Natural-Looking Results

Since fat is harvested from your own body, the transferred tissue feels and looks completely natural, blending seamlessly with surrounding areas.

2. Dual Benefit Procedure

Fat transfer sculpts the donor area, such as the abdomen, thighs, or flanks, by removing excess fat through liposuction while enhancing the targeted area.

3. Long-Lasting Volume

Unlike temporary fillers, fat transfer offers long-lasting results as the transferred fat integrates with your body’s tissue. With proper care, these enhancements can last for years.

4. Low Risk of Allergic Reactions

Because the procedure uses your own fat, there’s no risk of allergic reactions or rejection, making it a safer option compared to synthetic materials.

5. Versatile Applications

Fat transfer can address a wide variety of cosmetic goals, including:

  • Restoring volume to hollow or aging areas of the face.
  • Enhancing curves in the buttocks (Brazilian Butt Lift).
  • Adding subtle volume to the breasts for a more natural contour.
  • Improving the appearance of scars or indentations.

6. Minimal Scarring

The procedure involves tiny incisions for fat extraction and transfer, leaving minimal scarring that fades over time.

7. Enhances Skin Quality

Research suggests that fat transfer can improve skin texture and elasticity, thanks to the regenerative properties of the fat and stem cells.

8. Customizable Results

Fat transfer allows precise sculpting and contouring to meet your unique goals, whether you’re looking for subtle refinement or more dramatic changes.

At Clinic 360, our expert surgeons ensure your fat transfer procedure is customized to achieve the balanced, natural results you desire, helping you feel confident and rejuvenated.

Popular Fat Transfer Procedures

Fat transfer, also known as fat grafting, is a versatile procedure that can enhance and rejuvenate various areas of the body. By using your body’s natural fat, this technique creates beautifully sculpted, natural-looking results while reducing fat in donor areas. Here are the most popular fat transfer procedures offered at Clinic 360:

 

1. Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL)

  • Overview: Fat is removed from areas like the abdomen, flanks, or thighs and transferred to the buttocks to create a fuller, rounder, and more lifted appearance.
  • Benefits: This procedure enhances curves, improves body proportions, and provides a natural look and feel compared to implants.

2. Breast Fat Transfer

  • Overview: Fat is harvested and injected into the breasts to increase volume, improve symmetry, or enhance contours.
  • Benefits: Ideal for patients seeking a subtle, natural-looking enhancement without implants. It can also be used to refine results after breast reconstruction.

3. Facial Fat Transfer

  • Overview: Fat is injected into areas of the face that have lost volume due to aging, such as the cheeks, temples, under-eye hollows, or lips.
  • Benefits: Smooths wrinkles, restores youthful volume, and provides long-lasting results with a natural appearance.

4. Hand Rejuvenation

  • Overview: Fat is transferred to the hands to reduce the appearance of prominent veins, tendons, and hollowing caused by aging.
  • Benefits: Creates a smoother, more youthful appearance with improved skin texture.

5. Scar and Contour Correction

  • Overview: Fat transfer is used to fill in depressions caused by scars, indentations, or previous surgeries, improving the texture and appearance of the skin.
  • Benefits: Provides a smoother, more even skin surface while enhancing overall contour.

6. Hip Dips Correction

  • Overview: Fat is injected into the hip area to fill in “dips” and create a smoother, more curvaceous silhouette.
  • Benefits: Balances proportions and enhances the body’s natural curves.

What to Expect After Fat Transfer

After a fat transfer, patients can expect some swelling, bruising, and mild discomfort in both the donor and treated areas, which typically subside within the first few weeks. Compression garments may be required to support the donor site, while care should be taken to avoid pressure on the treated area to optimize fat survival. Swelling and volume fluctuations are normal, as some transferred fat will be reabsorbed. Most patients can resume light activities within a week and regular routines, including exercise, after 4 to 6 weeks. Final results, which are natural and long-lasting, become visible after 3 to 6 months once the swelling resolves and the transferred fat integrates with the surrounding tissue.

360 Sleeve Clinic Consultation

At Clinic 360, our patient consultants will provide you with honest answers and complete assessments to ensure that all your questions and concerns are properly addressed.

We are thrilled to provide efficient and convenient treatment options for our patients from out of town and abroad.

 

Alina Tsymbalarou

Manager

Related Links

Liposuction

Liposuction Cost

Liposuction Techniques

Tumescent Technique

Liposuction Risks & Complications

Liposuction Recovery

Gynecomastia

Fat Transfer

Anaesthesia & Sedation

Choosing the Right Surgeon

Fat Transfer FAQ

What is the most common obstacle in fat transfer procedures?
Fat harvesting extracts adipose tissue through liposuction. The fat is then collected with a centrifuge. Adipose tissues are quite fragile, and can sometimes be too damaged by liposuction to be successfully transferred from one area of the body to another. In order to preserve the cell and achieve optimal results, the surgeon must keep the tissue membrane intact. As part of this effort, doctors make their best attempts to minimize time in between fat harvesting and fat injection. Medical advances have increased the survival rate of adipose cells to 80-90 percent in the majority of transfer techniques.
What is the most popular technique for fat transfer?
Surgeons often opt to use the tumescent technique, a method that involves the careful transmission of adipose tissue through the use of a dilute reservoir known as a tumescent lipoaspirate; this helps surgeons preserve the fragile cells from the time they are suctioned out of their initial location to when they are transplanted into recipient zones. Moreover, tumescent liposuction permits doctors to use a local anaesthesia instead of a general anaesthesia, which is more economical and decreases the client’s recovery time.

While ultrasound and laser-assisted liposuction are highly effective techniques for the purpose of fat removal, lasers and ultrasound waves cause irreparable damage to fat cells, leaving them unusable. As such, manual tumescent liposuction is the preferred technique to combine with fat transfer.

What aesthetic benefits do fat transfer procedures offer?
Clients may be drawn to fat transfers for its wide range of aesthetic benefits. Autologous fat grafting (also called lipografting) can help smooth out dermal regions affected by acne, scarring, injury, and past surgeries. An increasingly popular application of fat grafting is to reconstruct breasts in women who have undergone single- or double-mastectomies. Additionally, autologous fat grafting can help counteract soft tissue loss in the face, identified as a key factor in the visual appearance of ageing. Surgeons do this by injecting adipose tissue from other areas of the body into “facial grooves” using a medical syringe. This enables the surgeon to correct the volume of the face and assist the client in achieving a more youthful appearance.
Is autologous fat transfer safe?
Autologous fat transfer for facial contouring is regarded as a relatively safe and inexpensive procedure.
How many sessions are needed for fat transfer procedures to be complete?
Most lipografting procedures do not require more than a single session; with more experienced physicians, the surgery can sometimes be limited to an hour or less. However, in a small percentage of cases, the surgeon will request a second session to help with the patient’s convalescence (for example, the mitigation of swelling) or to address aesthetic concerns (symmetry, volume, etc.). A common objective for doctors who perform lipografting is to reduce the time in between fat harvesting and injection. With more experienced physicians and techniques, fat grafting can often be limited to an hour or less (excluding the fat harvesting procedure).
What are the most popular areas for fat harvesting and transfer?
The most popular areas for fat harvesting are the thighs and buttocks, and the most common recipient sites include the hands, sternum, hips, biceps, triceps, face, and calves.
Why is fat transfer used for breast augmentation?
Liposuction may be a desirable breast augmentation method for individuals who prefer a natural and minimally invasive alternative to silicone breast implants. Breast augmentation procedures can accomplish an array of positive results, including an increase in fullness and suppleness, soft contouring of the breasts, improvement to asymmetrical breasts, and refinement of the intra-mammary cleft (cleavage). Patients often select fat transfer breast augmentation as a way to counteract deflated-looking breasts.
What are the limitations of fat transfer for breast augmentation?
The volume increase in the recipient area of the fat transfer is limited to the amount of tissue the surgeon is able to extract from other areas of the body. Many women with small breasts tend to have minimal fat in the rest of the body as well. Patients hoping to achieve major augmentation to the breasts may need to consider non-autologous options, such as dermal fillers or stem cells, either in lieu of or in addition to body fat transfer.
What are the advantages of autologous fat transfer?
Since adipose tissue is harvested from thicker areas of the body and injected into areas that require greater volume, autologous fat transfer is an efficient method of beautifying two separate parts of the body. Another advantage lipografting has over collagen injections is that the human body is accustomed to its own fat cells, whereas collagen is a foreign substance; therefore, in using collagen injections, the surgeon runs the risk of inducing an allergic reaction. Furthermore, autologous fat transfers statistically have longer lasting results compared to dermal fillers.
What are the potential side effects of autologous fat transfer?
While the surgical drawbacks of liposuction techniques are constantly being reduced, individuals can still incur scarring, bruising, bleeding, oozing, tenderness, and saggy skin, as well as a range of other side effects. Moreover, after long periods of time, the skin has a natural tendency to reabsorb the injected fat, thereby slowly returning the body to its initial state. There have also been medical studies that find correlations between fat transfer procedures and the development of calcified lumps and/or cysts (this is particularly the case in breast augmentation procedures). Pre-operative screenings should be arranged between the practitioner and the patient to discuss all the potential side effects and to try to mitigate them as much as possible. Ideally, doctors will call to monitor patients’ recuperation.
Where can I find reputable scientific sources on liposuction and fat transfer procedures?

For individuals who wish to acquire further information, there are a number of well – reputed medical periodicals available – examples include, Dermatologic Surgery, The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

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