Featured Article Academic Journal Main Category: Surgery Also Included In: Transplants / Organ Donations Article Date: 27 Sep 2013 - 0:00 PDT
Current ratings for: Stem-cell fat grafts effective for plastic surgery
Scientists say that the first randomized human trial using stem-cell enriched fat grafts for reconstructive surgery shows that the procedure is safe, reliable and effective.
Researchers from the Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark say the procedure could become central to plastic and reconstructive surgery.
Autologous fat grafting, or lipofilling, is being increasingly used in reconstructive surgery, such as breast reconstruction following cancer, the researchers say.
The procedure involves harvesting a patient's own fat in order to increase the volume of fat in another area of their body.
The researchers point out that the procedure has high resorption rates of up to 80% - the percentage of the transferred fat that does not survive.
But recent animal studies have demonstrated that fat grafts that have been enriched with culture-expanded adipose (fat)-derived stem cells (ASCs) have been shown to significantly improve graft survival.
For their study, published in The Lancet, the researchers carried out the stem-cell fat graft procedure and compared this with the standard autologous procedure in 10 healthy volunteers.
The volunteers underwent liposuction so that fat tissue could be collected from one side of their abdomen.
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Stem-cell fat grafts effective for plastic surgery