As most of you know, I love microfat injections. I think it is the future of many new medical procedures. A new journal article was in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal, July 2015. “Superficial Enhanced Fluid Fat Injection (SEFFI) to Correct Volume Defects and Skin Aging of the Face and Periocular Region.” A doozy of a title I know. But what it is talking about is doing microfat injections into the face and eye region.
Study:
- 98 patients
- 6 month follow up
- average volume: 20cc for .5ml prep, and 51 cc for the .8ml prep.
- Good or excellent results were achieved for volume restoration d skin improvement
- Complications were minor, and were a small oil cyst in 3 patients
- they used the smaller cannula for the eye area and the larger for larger volume deficits including the brow, temporal area, cheek bone, chin, lips, and nasolabial fold
They process their fat differently, using very small cannula to harvest, centrifuge for 1 minute, followed by adding PRP and then injecting with syringe needles. The needles used were 23 gauge for the eye area, and 20 gauge for the deeper areas.
In all of their cases, the procedure was done at the same time as cosmetic surgery.
Thoughts?
This was a good study in many ways. They did histology and other analysis of their fat to see if the harvest and processing yielded viable fat. It did.
- They compared their technique to Coleman’s original fat technique which used larger cannulas size. (For the non doctors out there, the larger the size, the bigger the fat, and an increased risk for irregularity and lumpiness exists.)
- They compared to when people emulsify the fat, where they purposefully try to make the fat breakdown into fine particles, so you are injecting stem cells, but no viable fat. That can improve the skin quality, but does not add volume.
- They did not like techniques with collagenase, because it is unclear if when injected it would affect normal collagen in the injection sites.
My only thoughts were about using a sharp needle to do the injecting (they advocate it to allow for precise placement superficially), as it does increase the risk of vascular complications (ie injecting into a blood vessel). I am also not clear on the benefits of the addition of PRP. I need to research it more.
Finally, I wish they had compared it apples to apples, where they compared their technique to microfat injection using .7 and .9 ml cannulas which many of us use.
But I agree with a great deal of their amounts, placements, and ideas.