Fat is beautiful:

Renaissance of body fat

Transplanting somebody else's fat into a patient's body would be a catastrophe. The Berlin plastic surgeon Meyburg made one such attempt in the middle of the last century. He transplanted dead people's fat into female breasts in order to enlarge them. The results were disastrous: infections, oil cysts with remaining dead tissue parts, breast deformations and amputations and so forth. The surgeon could not cope with the consequences of his methods; he committed suicide.

The use of a patient's own body fat as filling material has been tested several decades ago - with frustrating results. Only a few months after implanting a lump of fat, the fat would turn into an oil cyst. The cyst would then be absorbed until almost everything was lost. The only fat cells able to survive were on the periphery as those were nurtured by capillary in-branching.

The excellent plastic surgeon José Guerrerosantos from Mexico has conducted experimental research on body fat since 1982. After visiting Guerrerosantos in Jalisco, Guadalajara, the New York plastic surgeon Sydney Coleman has helped, since 1994, to draw popular attention to the refined method. For each body fat donation a new channel will be created within the tissue. Through a special cannula, a 1 mm cylinder of body fat will be implanted where natural volume is missing. When the cannula is being withdrawn, more body fat will be squirted in.

The best spot for this body fat cylinder and the cannula that was developed by Coleman is in between two muscle fibres - where blood circulation is high. The procedure is necessarily time-consuming. The special fluid will need almost one hour to take effect on the spots where body fat is to be extracted: the insides of the upper thigh, the insides of the knees, and so forth. Low subpressure will help to extract and fracture body fat with 10 ccm³ syringes. Three fluids are secreted: oil on top, fat in the middle, serum at the bottom. The middle third is to be carefully separated and filled into 2 ccm³ syringes.

The purified fat can then be implanted where necessary. The whole procedure lasts 2-2,5 hours and is accordingly expensive - which is the most prominent disadvantage of this method. There are, however, many advantages: foreign body or allergical reactions can be excluded. After all, this is autobiorecycling. 60-80% of fat cells, thus transplanted, will survive in the long run. In the lower part of the body the percentage is even higher.
 

Even after facial treatment, patients are socially presentable after 3-5 days. We usually strive for minor over-correction. An overdosis of transfered body fat can easily be balanced and corrected. Fat cells which have not yet grown in can, within the first 2-3 weeks, be killed by carefully dosed pressure with a finger. Post-corrections can also be made in case of underdose. Usually, more body fat is "harvested" than the amount needed for transfer. Unfinished 2ccm³ syringes with body fat can be stored in a freezer for 1-6 months. After three hours of de-freezing those fat cells can be post-implanted as desired.