Transferring fat to the breasts, buttocks and face continues to gain momentum as one of the best methods to bring back the volume you want, or have lost. The key to all the excitement: stem cells that make the fat come alive.
This weekend the 45th Annual Baker Gordon Symposium on Cosmetic Surgery was held in Miami, a small prestigious gathering of doctors who practice aesthetic surgery. This year’s focus was on the ‘aesthetic implications of combining volume with surgical contouring,’ the fancy way of saying that cosmetic plastic surgeons need to understand how to use fillers to create volume, rather than simply nipping and tucking.
One of the key speakers was Sydney R. Coleman, M.D., the New York-based father of modern fat transfers. Dr. Coleman has been practicing fat transfers since the 1980s, and in the last decade has developed fairly simple techniques to increase the stem cell count in the fat he transfers. The result is that the fat stays in place for years, if not permanently, thanks to the stem cells that create a nice network of capillaries to nourish the fat and keep it happy.
The other incredible discovery that Dr. Coleman made in the 1990s was that the skin quality where he injected fat just kept getting better, improving in volume and color, with wrinkles and pores decreasing. At the time he did not know why; today we know it’s because of all the stem cells in the fat.
“There are burn scars I’ve been treating, and after 14 years they are still improving,” Dr Coleman told NEW YOU in an exclusive interview. “There are a lot of other [cases] with improvements 5 to 8 years and beyond.” Basically, while you can remove fat later if you don’t like it, what remains after 3 or 4 months of settling down continues to not only last, but to improve the quality of the skin with passing time, as the adult stems cells take on the characteristics of youthful skin cells.
Talk about the gift that keeps on giving…
