I have been seeing a lot of ads for the “stem cell facelift” lately and I have had my interest peaked because I have not seen any legitimate articles or studies related to this topic and I keep up with the world literature and frequently discuss the latest and greatest with the elite surgeons from around the world. Upon further research I learned that some doctors have theorized that the fat cells that are injected at the time of fat transfer have stem cells within them that are capable of adding to the regeneration of youthful cells. Therefore, they are calling their facelifts ,”Stem cell Facelifts” which is a sexy name.
Injecting fat into the face is nothing new, in fact it has been around since the 1970’s. I have been doing fat injections to the face with 90% of my facelifts for many years and have literally thousands of patients who have had this procedure with me. There probably are stem cells within the fat cells (as there would be in any type of other cell in the body) but if there is a regenerative property to the injected fat, it has not been proven. We see tremendous benefit from fat injections and they make very nice changes to the face when done by a skilled surgeon. The hope is that the stem cells within the injected fat would create rejuvenation to the surrounding tissue such that even the quality of the skin above the injected fat would improve. If this happens, it is a very subtle change. I was glad to learn that I have been performing “Stem cell facelifts” (according to the advertising doctors) for years.