A new survey reveals that in the last decade many plastic surgeons have begun to add fat grafting procedures–where fat is taken from elsewhere in the body and injected in the face–to their facelift procedure. This newly widespread procedure is in response to a realization that traditional facelifts don’t replace lost volume, though a nonsurgical facelift does.
Why So Many Surgeons Have Added Grafting
In the past, a facelift procedure was a simple cut and stretch technique: doctors cut away what they perceive as “excess” skin and stretch the rest over your face. Of course, this doesn’t always give natural-looking or even youthful results because your face has lost volume with age. Stretching skin over the face can alter your appearance and even make you look bony and aged.
Replacing lost volume is crucial to restoring a youthful appearance. Some of the volume you’ve lost is due to teeth wearing down or being lost and some of it is lost fat.
Plastic surgeons are now turning to fat grafting to replace lost fat volume. According to the survey, 85% of plastic surgeons are now using fat grafting as part of their facelift.
What’s Wrong with Fat Grafting?
Fat grafting might seem like an ideal approach to restoring lost facial volume. After all, you might think, you get to get rid of excess belly fat and plump up your face at the same time. But it’s not as easy as that. Here’re some of the problems with relying on fat grafting.
You need a donor site: On the one hand, taking fat from your belly can seem like a good thing, but you have to realize that the process of taking the fat requires liposuction. So, instead of one surgical area, now you have two. And liposuction is one of the riskier types of plastic surgery.
Most of the fat dies: Fat grafting unfortunately kills most of the grafted fat. In fact, some studies show that when you have fat grafted, more than 75% of it might die. This makes it very hard to achieve the facial volume you want.
Results are unpredictable: Surgeons don’t know which fat is going to die and which is going to survive, so they often “overfill” your face to account for this. But the fat might not die evenly, so you could end up with one part of your face that is chubby and another part that is lean. This will require numerous “touch-up” procedures to get right, if that’s even possible.
Another Way to Restore Your Face
But there’s another way to rejuvenate your facial appearance. A nonsurgical facelift or Fountain of Youth Denture® replace the volume your body lost because of the effects of aging on your teeth and jaws.
These techniques don’t require cutting your face, don’t lead to an unnatural appearance, and don’t rely on a risky fat graft procedure to help you look younger. And you get a beautiful new smile as well, something that will help you look younger, too.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of facial rejuvenation at our office, please call (912) 234-8282 for an appointment with a Savannah cosmetic dentist at Beyond Exceptional Dentistry.
