Eventually everyone?s face shows signs of aging, such as volume loss, wrinkling,and sagging skin. Dr. Heidi Harrington of Atlantic Plastic Surgery Center offers fat grafting for correction of the effects of facial aging and gravitational pull. Fat grafting is highly successful for restoring a youthful contour to the face, which can correct deep facial lines, nasolabial folds, sunken eyes, sagging of the brow and jowling of the jawline. Facial descent or sagging can be often corrected by a facelift, while fat that is lost from the surrounding tissue is replaced by fat grafting or transfer to create a natural and youthful look.
Facial fat transfer is a minimally invasive rejuvenation procedure, which allows Dr. Harrington to reshape and restore the face to a more youthful profile. Fat grafting can be used alone or in combination with other procedures such as a facelift, rhinoplasty or blepharoplasty. Early signs of aging, such as fat migration or shifting, fat descent or fat loss can often be corrected with fat injections, alone.
Using the patient’s own fat for augmentation after facial sagging and hollowing can rejuvenate and elevate the local tissue. The fat is removed from an area of the body such as the love handles or buttocks with a small needle after the area has been numbed. The fat is purified and filtered to retain the highest quality fat for grafting. The fat is then injected into the facial area to be cosmetically improved.
Facial reshaping can be used to correct a thin or gaunt face, a long face, a bottom heavy or jowly face, or a face with flatness of the mid-face, or an asymmetrical facial shape. By using this minimally invasive technique, the patient’s face can be reshaped without the extensive downtime which accompanies more invasive techniques or longer procedures. Facial reshaping can also be used with a rhinoplasty procedure (correction of the nose) and other facial procedures to create better results by shaping the face to blend with the corrected nose.
While this technique has been used for facial rejuvenation, this new development of transferring fat from one part of the body to other areas of the body is also under going advances. For example, there is now fat grafting to the breast for both cosmetic and reconstructive purposes and fat grafting to the buttocks for lifting or volumizing. If you have any questions or would like more information, please call our office to talk with our knowledgeable staff to schedule a consultation with Dr. Heidi Harrington.