CosmeticSurg blog: Expert insights from Dr. Ricardo L. Rodriguez

Lipo to the love handles means different things to different plastic surgeons. Many surgeons consider liposuction to the love handles as just liposuction to the front flanks. They do not take any fat from the backside. Lipo to the full flanks is lipo to the love handles and liposuction to the back flanks. The back flanks is the area immediately above the buttocks.

As with any surgery, the body lift comes with possible complications and potential revisions as it lifts and tightens the entire lower part of the body. The good news is that most complications are relatively minor and can be handled post operatively in the office setting.

In general, possible complications from the Body Lift procedure include: fluid accumulation, hematoma, seroma, infection, poor wound healing (wound separation), asymmetry, unfavorable scarring, numbness or other changes in skin sensation, fat necrosis and deep vein thrombosis (primarily associated with General Anesthesia).

Yesterday I did a Lip lift. My patient was a young woman, which is unusual for this procedure. Most women that need a Lip lift are older, and they have noticed the upper lip getting “thinner” as they age. Since the red part of the lip is getting thinner, they assume this is the part that needs to be augmented. So when a woman comes to me for lip enhancement, most of the time she is thinking…

This patient is being prepped for an upper lip lift today.  After completing the surgical plan markings, she graciously allowed me to take this quick video to explain the pre-op markings I make for lip lift patients.

Several people have asked me if fat grafts are permanent. They keep reading from other sources that fat grafts are not permanent or that they may need another procedure. In my experience, when done correctly, fat grafts are permanent, and I have yet to do a second procedure to add more fat in any of my patients. This is because of the way fat is harvested and the choice of sites for harvesting fat are crucial to the success of the Brazilian butt lift or any other fat injection procedure. In this blog entry I will detail how I harvest fat, process it, inject it, and care for the graft after surgery. In a subsequent entry I will describe how choice of harvest site matters.

The findings supported the contention that regenerative treatment can be safely given to patients with dormant cancers. Dormant cancer cells are not actively growing or dividing. The study also concluded that active tumors can be stimulated to grow by contact with adipose stem cells. This asserted that regenerative stem cell therapy should not be performed when cancers are active. The University of Pittsburgh Medical School is a pioneer in the field of adipose stem cell (ASC) research. Much of the original adipose stem cell research originated at labs in the Pittsburgh Medical School in collaboration with researchers from University of California.

At the 2010 IFATS conference in Dallas, Dr. Sydney Coleman concluded that the high density fractions of lipoaspirate are superior to the low density fractions in terms of fat survival because they have a higher percentage of stem cells. What does this mean for fat grafting patients?

Since I started writing about fat grafts, stem cells, and the regenerative properties and medical potential back in 2009, about 7 years after performing one of my first fat grafting cases, I have become more and more involved and dedicated to the science of fat grafting. As the current President of IFATS (the International Federation for Adipose Therapeutics and Science), I’m excited to be posting a quick note about this year’s conference, which starts tomorrow in San Diego. This year we’re bringing together not only the leading clinical practitioners with whom we are all familiar, but also leading endocrinologists, experts in the field of genomics and big data as applied to medicine, and stem cell researchers from other specialties such as cardiology and orthopedics.

The Body lift procedure removes excess skin from the stomach, hips, and buttocks. Patients who have experienced a large weight loss (from Ozempic, Wegovy, Semaglutide or Tirzepatide, or from Gastic surgery) are the typical candidates for the procedure. The Body lift is a Tummy tuck, an outer thigh lift, and a buttock lift performed in the same operative session.

Highlights from the 2010 ASPS plastic surgery hot topics panel  In 2010 , I attended the annual ASPS National Plastic Surgery Meeting in Toronto. We particularly enjoyed the ‘Hot topics’ panel session and have written an analysis of the notable presentations on Adipose Stem Cells by Dr. Robert Singer and Dr. Peter Rubin.

I have been performing the Brazilian butt lift for almost a decade.  With this procedure, I remove fat from unwanted areas and then reinject into your buttocks.  Patients are now doing so much research , that I often get the question about how much fat is injected into the buttocks. To answer the question, I looked at my last 100 procedures to find out the average amount of fat which is injected per patient, per buttock cheek.  Before I give you the answer, you should know that the final amount injected will NOT be the amount which is removed. The amount reinjected will only be  a fraction of the amount of fat which  I  have removed.  I only keep the ‘good fat’ . The rest of the fat contains dead cells, blood, and other components that will *not* help the fat survive.

Many doctors on Instagram take their photos right on the operating room table. This is NOT an accurate representation of what the result will be. For starters, plastic surgeons inject tumescent solution into the buttocks, and this fluid will make the buttocks appear bigger on the operating room table. That solution will dissolve later. In addition, photos taken on the Operating Room table have the patient facing down. This positioning will give the appearance of hips larger than what they will be when standing upright.

Silicone breast implants are back! The truth always comes out in the end. In the case of silicone breast implants, it took 14 years! How can it be that implants are supposed to be so bad yet they’re back in the market? Well, because silicone breast implants were never really ‘bad.’

I have been doing the Vertical Scar Breast reduction since 1989, having learned it in Nice, France, from Dr. Claude Lassus, a French plastic surgeon, who is the originator of the technique. When I left France, I started doing the technique at Yale, where I was a faculty member in the plastic surgery department. I presented the first scientific paper on the technique in the US in 1992 at the 25th anniversary meeting of the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.