Fat transfer, or Fat grafting, is a surgical technique where fat is taken from one body part and injected into another. Fat grafting as a concept makes a lot of sense, and has recently received a lot of attention once it was realized that fat was a great source for pluripotent cells, cells that can differentiate into various other tissues and thus provide a healing potential to injure tissues. However, fat grafting has been difficult because of technical problems. It has always been difficult to ensure that all of the fat survives. In fact, 30-50% of the transferred fat does not survive in most cases. And because it’s unpredictable how much fat exactly does survive, many surgeons have stayed away from this technique.
Recent advances in harvesting and transferring techniques have increased the proportion of the fat that does survive the transfer. Additionally, because of it’s healing potential, fat transfer has been used in breast reconstruction cases where the mastectomy skin was too thin.
Also, fat grafting has been a popular technique for butt augmentation, known as Brazilian Butt Lift. And finally, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons has recently released information about fat grafting for breast augmentation.

Martin Jugenburg,MD, FRCSC
Toronto, ON