Miami plastic surgeons are moving fat from its unwelcome home in areas such as your thighs and stomach and relocating it where you can use it – in your face, derriere, hands and breasts. As in any renewal project, the result is a “you-haul” or overhaul to restore areas of the face that have been ravished by time.

The recipe: take one tablespoon of fat from the patient’s lower stomach or inner knees. Then, take some of the patient’ blood and spin it to get platelet-rich plasma. Mix the plasma with the fat so that the fat survives longer. According to a Miami plastic surgeon, “If I can get that fat cell to live, it will live as long as that fat cell was destined…..and some fat seems to live forever.”

Finally, inject the mixture in the patient’s lips, nasolabial folds, eye hollows or jawline and enjoy the results.

Some plastic surgeons beef up the recipe by injecting the patient’s own stem cells into the face along with the fat. A plastic surgeon interviewed by the Miami Herald on January 14th, 2012, says, “Recent research has shown the highest concentration of adult stem cells is found in someone’s own fat.”

During a facelift, this surgeon removes fat from a patient’s abdomen, love handles or outer thighs. He injects the fat into the patient’s face but at the same time sends a portion of the fat to a lab in Indiana where the stem cells are separated from the fat. The lab stores the patient’s stem cells in syringes and returns them to the doctor within two weeks. Alternately, the lab can cryopreserve the syringes and store them indefinitely for the patient’s future use.

The stem cells are then injected into the wrinkles around the mouth, cheek or forehead to supposedly stimulate increased blood supply to the area and also to stimulate collagen formation to make the face look fuller and healthier. Results are not supposed to be visible for a few weeks to a month (or longer) because this is a slowly evolving process.

But, consumers beware. For now, stem cell injections for aesthetic purposes are a leap of faith. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the two leading plastic surgery societies in the United States, the marketing and promotion of stem cell procedures in aesthetic surgery is not adequately supported by clinical evidence at this time.  Stem cell injections are seen as “promising,” but marketing claims are way ahead of the science. For more information, speak to a board-certified plastic surgeon.