Dual Action Fat Transfer to Improve Fat Grafting Efficiency and Viability

While liposuction has long remained a staple of the plastic surgeonu0027s arsenal, recent attention has focused on autologous fat grafting for a wide variety of uses. This technique has demonstrated utility in both cosmetic and reconstructive surgery for volume and contour correction. Plastic surgeons have continued to expand on fat grafting indications and it now represents the standard of care for the correction of post-mastectomy reconstruction contour irregularity, where moderate to large volumes are frequently needed for adequate aesthetic correction.1As the practice has gained traction there has been an increase in the number of techniques for the harvesting, processing, and eventual transfer of autologous adipose tissue.1,2 Centrifuging, decanting, hand processing, and various off-shelf filtering units have helped improve the efficiency and long-term viability of fat grafting, however, there remains no agreed-upon gold standard for the practice. One major limitation of many of these methods is the time required to harvest and process the fat with traditional single-surgeon suction-assisted lipectomy (SAL). Additionally, some have raised questions as to the effect of high-pressure harvesting on long-term graft viability.2,3 This letteru0027s aim is to demonstrate a simple technique, which increases harvesting efficiency, while also attempting to maximize the potential for graft viability. …