Fat Transfer

Offered at our convenient location in Denver

What Makes Fat Transfers Unique?

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The fat transfer procedure allows you to use your own natural fat tissue to enhance areas on your face or body.

This revolutionary procedure allows you the opportunity to shape your body naturally without using primitive methods or by introducing a foreign substance into your body.

Current patients can undergo Fat Transfers for multiple body areas. Dr. Millard has been a leading pioneer in the development of tools and techniques that not only have improved the success of your fat transplantation procedure but have significantly improved the safety of the procedure as well. 

Dr. Millard not only performs fat grafting to the more commonly grafted places such as the female breast and the male and female buttocks, he has revolutionized techniques allowing him to transfer your fat into almost any muscle in your body. Commonly graft areas for Dr. Millard include Deltoid, Triceps, Biceps, Rectus, Obliques, and Back muscles, Quadriceps and Calf muscles.

Benefits

The biggest reason? Using only natural components of your own body poses no risk.

According to Dr. John Millard, “By sculpting patients’ physique using their own adipose-derived tissue, we essentially change the anatomy of the patients so their results will naturally age and evolve along with the rest of the tissue in their body.”

Dr. Millard is proud to be at the leading edge of development in this area, enabling him to offer patients this must up to date and advanced all-natural method of body contouring and enhancement.

If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to schedule a complimentary consultation today.

 

History of Fat Grafting

Fat grafting begins with the technique of lipoaspiration/liposuction, ending with the placement of the patient’s fat into another part of the body. How well and how experienced your physician is in each of the steps of fat grafting can play a significant part in the success of your fat grafting. The history of fat grafting goes back over a century, but the real modern era of fat grafting can be traced back to more recent history with the works of Dr. Sydney Coleman.

 

How Does a Fat Transfer Work?

How is my fat harvested?

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There are many variables involved in how your fat will be harvested that can determine it’s success later once transplanted. Fat is a delicate structure, thus, how it is obtained/harvested must also be a delicate process or technique. Regardless of the technology, one thing that most surgeons agree on is, that harvesting at low and consistent pressures maximizes survival of the harvested fat. Your fat will be harvested at a low and consistent pressure made possible by the VASER System. The fat is made ready to harvest by ultrasound assisted emulsification of the fat globules, via the process of “LipoSelection” and “Acoustic Streaming.” Both of these processes separate the fat from their surrounding structures while minimally traumatizing both the fat and the surrounding structures.

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Furthermore, the VASER system, by way of it’s “Acoustic” streaming, makes the fat globules the perfect size to transplant. This emulsification process has been further improved upon by the V5 -VASER 5-Ring Probe, Dr. Millard designed for the VASER and a probe many VASER surgeons have adopted into their procedures. The VASER System has been engineered to aspirate at low pressures and at a consistent pressure by there patented VentX Cannula System, unique to the VASER System. Further improvements in harvesting have been innovated by Dr. John Millard, with his “Beveled” cannula system, which further decreases trauma to fat being harvested for transplantation.

How is my fat processed?

The fat does best, when handled least. VASER has one of the few systems out in use, that provides a sterile and closed, low pressure system from harvest to placement in it’s new body part. We use one of these “Closed” in-line systems to maximize fat survival. Part of this technology includes realtime filtration (Removal of unwanted substances), removing much of the fractured fat cells, blood and other substances toxic to the fat. Real-time filtration in an important step in the process of fat grafting.

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How is my fat placed into another body part?

The current standard is to place fat into it’s new body part in very small amounts, much as one would carefully plant seeds into a garden. This is most commonly done blindly, which can lead to a couple risks. The first, being the risk of placing fat into a blood vessel, which can have deadly consequences. The second, “Overgrafting” (Placement of too-much fat into a small area), which can result in none of the fat taking there, and in fat cysts.

Dr. Millard has pioneered a technique called Ultrasound-Image-Guided-Fat-Transplantation (UIGFT), whereby the fat is placed under the vision of an ultrasound generated image. Key to this is also special cannulas (Echogenic) designed by dr. Millard, to be seen more clearly than regular cannulas during this process.

Benefits of UIGFT
  • Avoidance of blood vessels
  • More even placement of fat and reduction of risk of “Overgrafting”
  • Ability to place larger amounts of fat in an given areas if desired (Such as in the Breast or Buttocks)

Dr. Millard as also designed a special tool utilized during the fat grafting procedure to more evenly mix the grafted fat into the native fat. This tool called the “Millard Integrator,” which essentially mixes fat into surrounding fat, similar to a baker mixing chocolate chips into cookie doe.

Where is my fat placed and why?

Fat has been historically placed into the face and hands, buttocks, and more recently the female breast. Dr. Millard has been one of the leading pioneers, taking fat transplantation to virtually any superficial muscle group and area of the body. He has pioneered techniques whereby fat has been placed into the male chest, muscles of the abdomen, back, shoulders, arms and legs. Much of this has been made possible by his UIGFT technique. It is the expansion of these body areas that has made possible, Dr. Millard’s pioneering and revolutionary, 4D VASER Hi Def technique. During this technique, Dr. Millard harvests a patients own fat and then utilizes it to fine tune his sculpting results for his patients, utilizing the patient’s own fat as an artistic sculptor like clay to refine their results. These techniques were recently released in a new textbook, where he contributed a chapter describing these revolutionary techniques.

What steps do you take to get my fat to maximally take?

Many of the steps for maximizing results have been mentioned in the previous steps described. Dr. Millard’s continued passion and curiosity to improves results and techniques, combined with his frequent use of fat grafting in many of his liposuction/liposculpting procedures, provides Dr. Millard and his patient’s with the tremendous experience he brings to each of the steps required to have a successful fat grafting procedure.

Do you use stem cells in my fat grafting?

There is extensive evidence that Adipocyte-Derived-Regenerative Cells (ADRC), which include adult stem-cells, are abundant within our fat. There is even some evidence that these ADRC’s when obtained and placed back into fat for fat grafting, may have some beneficial effects on fat grafting success. To date, there isn’t enough evidence for Dr. Millard to include this as part of his fat grafting technique. Dr. Millard keeps close tabs on changes in this area, staying up to date by attending meetings and following research on the subject.

What happens to fat after it is transplanted?

One of the most common questions I am asked is “How much fat takes?” It is a complicated answer in that recent research has made the answer more complex. The best answer is “What volume of fat transplanted remains and stays long term.

Recent research suggests that a particular volume of fat has three destinies:

  • A very small volume of the fat immediately takes
  • Another slightly larger volume immediately dies
  • The largest volume remaining dies slowly, and while dying, sends messages and substances to surrounding “Pre-adipocytes (Baby Fat Cells)”, telling them to grow uo and replace the slowly dying fat cells

That is why Dr. Millard will answer you with an estimated “Volume Retention” estimation. This “Volume Retention” percentage is also affected by the body part transplanted into, skin tightness, age and even sex of the patient, and many other variables still as yet to be determined. Often Dr. Millard will speak in terms of 50 to 70% volume retention, based on many of the variable just mentioned and based on his extensive experience.