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This woman in her early 40s comes to Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie for autologous fat grafting to her mid-face to rejuvenate her look. Many surgeons address aging face by performing a face-lift, without addressing another big issue in the aging face: loss of volume! Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie addresses the issue of aging face by restoring the volume first, followed by face-lift, if needed. Most often than not, patients who are below 50 years of age, rarely require a face-lift surgery.
Why fat? Why not filler? Well, there are 3 reasons why Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie prefers to use one’s own fat over fillers:
- Fat is much cheaper. Fillers are charged by the volume. Typically, for volume restoration, 1 cc of filler costs approx SGD 1000. For a proper mid-face volume restoration, Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie usually injects up to 20 cc of fat! If one uses one’s own fat, the fat is free-of-charge, regardless of the volume. Imagine how much you would have to pay if you used 20 cc of fillers!
- Fillers last approximately 1 year. Fat potentially lasts indefinitely……if the fat cells survived!
- Fat contains other substances which rejuvenate and make the skin appear more radiant: stem cells, estrogen and vitamins. Fillers just fill up volume.
The disadvantages of using fat? There is a degree of uncertainty on the survival of injected fat cells. They may or may not survive. There is also a risk of fat necrosis. Having performed thousands of fat grafting to the face, Dr Arthur Tjandra of Elixir de Vie encountered only one case of fat necrosis, out of the thousands of facial fat grafting he has performed in the last 10 years. The patient is a smoker who stopped smoking only 1 week prior to the procedure, and continued to smoke immediately after fat injection to her forehead and cheeks. It is recommended that one stops smoking minimum 1 month before the procedure, and continue to stop smoking for at least another month after the procedure.
Video 1: Pre-operative assessment.
Video 2: Completion of fat injection into left side of face.
Video 3: Completion of autologous fat grafting facial rejuvenation.
Video 4: Result of autologous fat grafting facial rejuvenation, 1 month later.
For more Liposuction Case Studies, please visit our website: http://elixirdevie.sg/liposuctioncasestudies.html
More liposuction before and after surgery photos can be see here: http://elixirdevie.sg/liposuction%20before%20and%20after.html
Combination of liposuction and autologous fat grafting to breasts or/and buttocks can be seen here: http://elixirdevie.sg/autologousfattransferforbreastaugmentation.html
A list of our patients’ blogs: http://www.elixirdevie.sg/blog.html