Fat Fillers – Benefits, Cost and Side Effects

You must have seen in our post about hyaluronic acid as to how it helps erase the creases on the face to give you youthful skin. While fillers like hyaluronic acid and collagen work wonders, they are all at the end of the day synthetically manufactured materials. Your body may or may not agree with being injected with foreign materials like them. Even if it does, many women themselves are wary about getting a shot of chemicals in their face. So they take the fat fillers route which makes use of your own body fat to plump up your skin. Sounds like a good option? Read on to find out more!

What are fat fillers?

Fat fillers are dermal fillers that are grafted from a part of your body with excess fat and injected into wrinkles and folds in order to smooth them out. The process is called fat transfer. The fat is extracted from liposuction and then injected from a syringe onto your wrinkles to plump them up.

Am I a candidate for fat transfer?

If you are healthy and do not suffer from any circulatory problems, then you are a candidate for fat transfer. You need to however have a donor site from where the fat can be grafted to be used as a filler.

Fat Transfer Procedure

The surgeon will identify a part of the body that has enough fat, say, the buttocks or the thighs. Local anesthesia is administered to this part and the fat from here is removed by liposuction after making a small incision. This fat is then purified and transferred to syringes that will be used to inject the filler into your skin.

The filler is then injected into the area that needs to be plumped up. The fat tissue is deposited into the skin by jabbing the injection on multiple spots in the area to be filled. This will ensure uniform deposition and distribution of the fat cells. Sometimes, the surgeon will overfill the area since a percentage of fat gets immediately metabolized.

Benefits of Fat Transfer

The filler that is used is extracted from your own body. So you can be sure that your body will not react adversely to the injection. That way, they are safer than other dermal fillers.
Fat fillers do not have any limitations about the areas that they can be used on. Other dermal fillers cannot be used anywhere other than the face while fat fillers can be used on any part of the body to enhance it.
The results of fat transfer are more long lasting when compared with other dermal fillers.

Cost

One of the disadvantage of fat transfer over other dermal fillers is the cost associated with it. While a procedure with synthetic fillers will never cost you more than $1000, fat transfer can cost you $3000-$4000 since it also involves grafting the fat from the body.

Side Effects of Fat Transfer

You could suffer from minor bruising and pain, both in the donor site and in the location where the filler is injected.
For a couple of days, you could experience some swelling in these regions too.
If not done correctly or if some portion of the fat is metabolized too soon, you might see some irregularity in the facial contour.

Fat grafting and the use of fat fillers is one of the safest ways to get firmer and younger looking skin. If you are considering dermal fillers for your face, then fat fillers are a great option.

Read more about Breast Lift with Fat Transfer here