Fat Grafting Facial Rejuvenation

Fat Grafting Facial Rejuvenation

Facial Rejuvenation with Fat Grafting is also known as Fat Lift or an attempt to revolumize the face to its youthful appearance.

Dr. Leonard Grossman is one of the few Plastic Surgeons in the world and one of the first Plastic Surgeons in New York who replaced a standard face lifting procedure with a procedure called Fat Grafting or Fat Transfer, as well as Fat Lift since 1995. With hundreds of satisfied patients, whose lives and vitality have been complimented with natural youthful looks by restoring their faces to their original proportions and appearance from decades earlier.

It has been a long lasting belief of Dr. Grossman’s, that faces appear older because of deflation or the loss of fat in the face as the person ages. A major reason for sudden aging of the face is related to a loss of large amounts of weight secondary to dietary or exercise changes, as well as chronic and serious illness or stress.

Aging of the face in Dr. Grossman opinion does not involve stretched muscles or skin ligaments (the old theory).

Dr. Grossman does not think that the gravity plays a major role in the aging process. If you were to look at your own photographs today and from twenty years earlier you would notice something that can only be called “deflation of the face” or loss of volume.

If this makes sense to you, why would anyone decide to undergo a procedure in which the muscles of the face are repositioned and tightened, producing the wind tunneled look, the result of a typical face lift procedure.

Only in patients who have suddenly lost 40 lbs. or more, there is usually a large amount of excess skin present, necessitating removal of excess skin, otherwise known as a skin face lift. This face lift can be performed together with a fat transfer procedure (explained bellow) which produces the most natural and relaxed facial rejuvenation result.

In patients who have pretty much been at the same weight throughout their lifetime, a face lift is not necessary, as it is not going to produce a result which is going to resemble the same person, when he or she was younger; instead, this person is simply going to look pulled.

Since 1995 Dr. Grossman has been performing Fat Transfer in order to rejuvenate faces of both, men and women.

The procedure involves going over the photographs of the same patient, when they were much younger, usually between the ages of 16 to 29. Dr. Grossman will discuss changes that have occurred since that time and together with the patient he will arrive to a plan as to where the patient is going to need more volume added in order to look younger and natural at the same time. This does not mean that you are going to look 18 after the procedure, but it does mean that you will look considerably more youthful and relaxed at the same time and resemble the same you as memory allows.

On the day of the procedure your face will be marked and areas of fat harvest will be marked as well. While under a twilight sleep, the fat will be removed from the most stubborn areas using a special blunt needle and a syringe. The fat will then be processed in order to assure the survivability of as many fat cells as possible. The processed fat will be then transferred to another kind of syringes, which in turn will be used to deliver or inject the viable fat cells where needed on the face or the neck.

The average time for the whole procedure is about 90 minutes. The recovery is extremely easy in the way that there is no post-operative pain and normal physical activities may be resumed just days after the procedure. There may be minimal bruising and that will resolve: faster in some, slower in others, but rarely more than one to two weeks.

There is always some swelling present after the procedure and that can last anywhere from as little as one week to as long as six weeks in the exceptional few.

Results of fat transfer are very long lasting if not permanent; the fat should behave in the same way as it did in the area where it was removed from. There will be natural loss of fat everywhere in the face as the person continues to get older.

Most patients look better after 10 years following Fat Transfer (Fat Lift) procedure than they did prior to surgery. The complications are few and there is no scarring.

To schedule your consultation with Dr. Grossman please call 212-585-2133