Lipoinfiltration, lipofilling or fat transplantation is on everyone’s lips in recent times. This surgical technique was developed at the beginning of the 20th century by Central European surgeons for purely reconstructive purposes. More than a hundred years have passed and the technique has evolved by leaps and bounds. Apart from having revised its reparative utility, it is currently applied with great success in cosmetic surgery.
At the end of the nineties of the last century, a famous American plastic surgeon, Dr. Sydney Coleman, revolutionized the world of fillers in cosmetic surgery. He perfected the concept of fat transplantation, treating it through a process of centrifugation and purification, and then infiltrating it with special instruments (cannulas) that he himself designed. At first, Coleman’s technique aroused some controversy among his colleagues, who believed that the transplanted fat would not remain in its new location. But time, and dozens of research studies published in the best scientific journals of plastic surgery, have proven him right.
The technique, which can be performed under local anesthesia or sedation, consists of extracting fat from a region where the patient has excess (abdomen, buttocks, thighs, etc.), processing it for several minutes in a centrifuge and infiltrating it into the area to be treated by means of fine cannulas, totally atraumatic. All this with minimal incisions that are completely unnoticed 48 hours after the intervention.
The entire facial region can be filled (cheekbones, nasolabial fold, lips, mandibular arch, palpebral area…), as well as the breasts (to increase their size or to correct asymmetries), both for aesthetic and reconstructive purposes, that is, for a few years this technique has also been used for much more complex reconstructions, for example oncological breast reconstruction with surprising and encouraging results in this field.
The fat, being the patient’s own, is never rejected and the most recent research asserts that it remains for more than 3 years. Some colleagues dare to say that its permanence is even unlimited. This revolution in the world of fillers leads to the conclusion that autologous fat is currently the best filler we can use in plastic surgery and also with sensational results.