Recently, the autologous fat injection has gained a renewed attention in aesthetic plastic surgery. It has been used for the treatment of wrinkles, grooves, sunken areas and depression in the face and extremities. There are several advantages of
fat
injection. Fat is obtained easily and can be injected repeatedly, there is no immune phenomenon, and fat can substitute for artificial materials.
Most surgeons have been pessimistic about it's use because of the resorption of the injected fat. However, some reported the survival of the injected fat more than 1 year ad even after 5 years in others.
The author perfomed this operation in 87 patients from 1989 to 1994 by the following procedures.
1. use a syringe to harvest the fat.
2. Use a large diameter system for fat removal, processing and injection.
3. Remove blood, oil and other contaminants by an atraumatic procedure with washing the harvested fat or centrifuging at 2000 rpm for 1 minute to separate the fat from the fluid.
4. The obtained fat must be kept from exposure to air.
In the patients with large amounts of resorption, a second fat injection ws performed. Among 87 patients, 75 patients were followed more than 1 month and the satisfactory results were obtained in 56 patients(74.7%) of 75 patients.
There were minor complications in 6 patients(6.9%).
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