Dr. Erica Anderson covers recovery after fat grafting to the breasts, buttocks, hands, and face. For BBL, avoid sitting on your butt for two weeks; if you must sit, keep it under 15-20 minutes and use a rolled cushion under your hips. Expect bruising and swelling everywhere, but no special diet or activity limits for breast grafts.
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Hi, I'm Dr. Erica Anderson and I am the body plastic surgeon at the Nadiri Center. And what I wanted to go through today with you is the post operative care after fat grafting. I think probably the most popular type of fat grafting is the Brazilian butt lift where fat is taken from multiple areas of the body and injected into the butt. But we actually fat graft the breast, the hands, any contour abnormalities, the face. We put fat in many, many places. So I want to give you an idea of recovery and things that you need to do in your recovery. If you've had fat grafting done. The first part of fat grafting is obviously the donor site. So we would have had to do liposuction in order to get the fat grafts. So I'd have you look at the liposuction video in our post operative video library, refer to that one. As far as what to do about the areas that we liposuctioned, but then as far as where we've put the fat, let's go through a couple of the different areas. So for the breast, if we fat grafted the breast, you've got a compressive bra in place, your incisions will be covered with the clear plastic Tegaderm dressing. And there's really not much to do with the overall care. You can expect bruising and swelling and the normal response. You might even feel some hard spots. These are all normal. In the process of healing, this will all go down in time, but nothing special to do there. No dietary restrictions, no activity restrictions. However, if we've done fat grafting to the butt, this is a much more complicated recovery or a little bit more limited because you can't sit down. So we would have placed the graft or I would have placed the grafts through two or three incisions per buttock, depending on the volume and depending on the contour that we're trying to create. And your goal will be to not put any excess weight or lengthy weight or lengthy time of weight on those areas. So typically I ask you to stay off your butt for two weeks. So that's no sitting for two weeks. You can lie on your stomach. Even if we've liposuctioned your stomach, you still lie on your stomach. And if you lie on your side, particularly if we've grafted the lateral buttock, just make sure that you're lying more forward on your hip crease and I will review that with you. It's hard to explain, but I can review that with you. In your preoperative area, but we want to avoid any extra weight on the butt. Now, if you have to sit for a period of time, it's reasonable for 15 minutes, have dinner, 20 minutes to do some activity. But really, as much as you can minimize sitting on the butt, the rolled cushions that sometimes you see on beds as a decorative pillow is a great resource that you can put that underneath the mid part of your hip or leg and that will help get the pressure off the butt. And that's something we can review in your preoperative video or in your preoperative visit. Other than that, get up, walk around, stay off the butt, and do well with your recovery. We are available if you have any questions or any concerns come up. Please call the office.
