Dr. Robert Whitfield explains how fat harvesting for transfer differs from standard liposuction. The surgeon selects specific donor sites like thighs, flanks, and abdomen, then processes the aspirated material to remove fluid and blood, leaving only viable fat for grafting.
Harvest is not ordinary liposuction where you debulk an area and throw that tissue away. We take fat intentionally from places such as the inner outer thighs, flanks, and abdomen, sometimes upper mid back areas for bra fat. Other sources can be arms. And sometimes from an instrumentation standpoint, we've really adjusted what we're doing to accommodate the fat. in these different areas, especially in low body weight patients. So processing then separates the fat from the fluid we use and from the blood and any other debris. We only want the usable fat, not a mixture of all the other materials that came out through the process of removal.
