With the move to more natural foods and lifestyles, many people are seeking to attain the results of traditional cosmetic augmentation without the use of implants or facial fillers. The growing popularity of autologous fat grafting, which transplants fat from one part of a patient’s body to another, has meant that more cosmetic surgery patients are able to achieve their desired all-natural beauty.
But there are benefits to this procedure that extend far beyond the augmentation of breasts or lips; a company in Dallas, Texas called BioLife Cell Bank has established a bank into which patients can deposit fat extracted in the course of liposuction. The fat can be stored for future cosmetic use and may someday have significant implications for medical and genetic research.
Fat extracted from a patient’s body has a variety of applications:
- filling wrinkles on the face
- correcting sagging earlobes
- breast augmentation
- buttocks lift
- lip augmentation
- filling scars and depressions
When used for filling out the face, scars, and depressions, transplanted fat can last longer than facial fillers, which often (depending on the type) need to be applied every six months to 1 year.
With this new fat bank, patients can have their fat retained for future use, instead of having it extracted repeatedly for different procedures over time. In the video above, Tina LeBoeuf, a breast reconstruction patient and mother of 3, is having fat taken from her lower body. Her surgeon will be using some of it to reconstruct her breast, and the rest will be mailed to BioLife Cell Bank, ready to be withdrawn at any time. Future procedures would require office injections rather than a stint in the O.R.
The stored fat may also have important applications in the future, since stored fat contains a high concentration of stem cells, which have been shown to have a number of medical applications.
