Fat Transfer to Body

After your surgery, you will be asked to come in for a post-operative appointment to come back and see our nursing staff at the clinic between 1 and 2 weeks after your surgery. At this point, your incision sites will be reviewed, and your preliminary healing will be assessed.

After 6 weeks your surgeon will personally review your progress – again at the clinic - and make sure you are recovering as expected. In addition, they will remove any stitches and advise you on the need for further dressings.

Throughout the recovery period, you will have full access to our 24/7 on-call nursing service, and full access to the Clinic and our post-operative facilities.

Our aim is to make you feel as comfortable as possible during the entirety of your recovery period.

As your anaesthetic or sedation wears off you will wake up in our recovery facilities at the clinic. You may feel a little drowsy but this often wears off within a few hours. After several hours in recovery, you will eat and hydrate. At that point, you will be allowed to leave the clinic by our nursing staff.

It is common to feel a little pain and discomfort in the immediate aftermath of surgery. This will wear off in due course. Our 24/7 on-call service is open to all patients for any question or query they may have at this time.

You will not be able to drive yourself home after the surgery. You should arrange for someone to pick you up and take you home. In addition, you will need to ask someone to stay with you for the first 24 hours after your procedure.

One of the major benefits of fat transfer is that recovery is typically very swift and patients can be back at work and active very shortly after the procedure. Whilst the extent of such activity should be gradually phased in, you should be back at work within a week and exercising within two weeks.

We always advise that you return to low impact activities first like walking and cycling before you are able to reintroduce more strenuous activities such as lifting heavy weights and doing intense aerobic activities.

Fat transfer is a straightforward and minimally invasive procedure that is carried out as a day case. As a result, there is minimal downtime required with fat grafting.

Following the procedure, you will recover in our ambulatory recovery rooms for a couple of hours before being allowed to leave with a friend or family member.

We recommend you take a week off work if needed and avoid driving for one week. You can expect a full recovery from fat transfer in two weeks.

However, there are various activities you should refrain from in the weeks following a fat transfer procedure.

Sexual activity should be avoided for two weeks while exercise should be avoided for four to six weeks, post-surgery. We would advise starting with low impact exercises, such as walking and cycling, before reintroducing more strenuous exercise, such as weightlifting or aerobics.

Depending on which part of the body has been treated, you may have to wear a surgical garment for four to six months following your fat transfer.

It is vital that you follow all the aftercare advice issued to ensure the best possible results from surgery. If you try to do too much too soon, this may impact the healing process.

Your surgeon will discuss this with you in further detail at your consultation.

It can take a while for the final results of a fat transfer to emerge. This is because the new fat has to establish a blood supply. Once the non-viable fat has been reabsorbed into the body and the swelling has subsided, you can expect to see the results of the fat transfer somewhere between six and 12 weeks after the procedure.

However you can expect to see ongoing improvements as the healing process progresses. It can take between 12 and 18 months to see the ultimate result of a fat transfer. This can vary from person to person and depends on which parts of the body have been treated.

Fat transfer is permanent, although this new fat will eventually start to be affected by the ageing process.

Of all the fat that is reintroduced to the body, between 50 and 70 per cent of these fat cells will survive. If you require a further increase in volume, a fat transfer procedure can be repeated at three-monthly intervals to achieve the desired result.

Your surgeon will discuss this with you in further detail at your consultation.

Certain lifestyle factors can increase the risk of complications during and after your surgery. These include smoking, drinking alcohol, being overweight and taking drugs (for medical or recreational use.)

The most common impact of smoking before your surgery is that it increases your chances of developing an infection and inhibits your body's natural healing processes. We insist that all patients stop smoking and using nicotine products at least six weeks before surgery. Reducing alcohol intake is also strongly advised. This is particularly important for fat grafting surgery in which the fat's viability post-procedure is materially reduced in a smoker population.

Your doctor will discuss your current BMI and drug use at your consultation and advise you further on this.

Autologous fat transfer is a technical term for fat transfer surgery. Autologous fat transfer simply means that the organic fat material is harvested from the same individual into which it is transferred.

All fat transfer surgery techniques are therefore by definition autologous fat transfer procedures.

Not only is the fat relatively easy to harvest via liposuction, but the transferred fat is biocompatible, non-allergenic, non-toxic and relatively easy to obtain in meaningful volumes.

More recently, surgeons have used the therapeutic and rejuvenating benefits of fat grafting in the healing of wounds and scars, as well as fat's ability to repair damage to breast tissue following radiation treatment.

The rejuvenating effects are due to the high concentration of mesenchymal cells present in the fat tissue.

This natural 'autologous' resource is therefore readily accepted in the treatment area, is easily topped up and can provide additional rejuvenating benefits.