Recent Advancements in Autologous Fat Grafting

It becomes obvious that fat tissue is not just storage of excess carbohydrate. It is a regenerative complex supporting from the skin surface to deeper organs comprising adult stem cells as well as high energy resource related with tissue repair and regeneration. Fat grafting technique, which has been performed for more than hundred years, is utilized to improve defects of facial contour, fat atrophy as an aging process and lipodystrophy due comorbid diseases. Nevertheless, the availability had been limited because of variable survival rate in accordance with operators and side effects such as fat necrosis. As Coleman technique was introduced in 1997, however, consistent operative results were obtained and autologous fat grafting has been settled as a reliable natural filler [1]. Although specific statistical report is deficient, autologous fat grafting is one of the most commonly conducted procedures in aesthetic and reconstructive surgery. Adipose stem cell (ASC), a kind of adult stem cell, was discovered around 2000 and have been studied for more than ten years by scientists and medical doctors. The outcome of scientific research has been accumulated and led ASC to be the core element of regenerative medicine [2,3]. Furthermore, ASC has been clinically applied to fat grafting and a new method of ‘cell-assisted lipotransfer’ was introduced [4,5]. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) can also be employed to improve survival rate of the grafted fat. PRP is known to have synergy effect with ASC in fat graft survival [6-11]. As the improvement of surgical techniques in fat surgery, survival rate of the grafted fat increased and side effects such as fat necrosis decreased. As a result, a new surgical trend of large volJae-Ho Jeong