Robert Whitfield MDAmerica's Breast Implant Illness Expert™

Low BMI Fat Transfer: The Biggest Challenge

14 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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1:22

Robert Whitfield MD explains the particular challenges of performing fat transfer in low-BMI (lower body weight) patients. He recommends objective body-composition assessment (DEXA) to locate available fat, emphasizes that low-BMI patients typically require fat harvest from multiple donor areas, and lists four common donor regions: inner and outer thighs, abdomen, and the love-handle/lower back area. For patients with more typical fat distribution, sometimes a single donor area (eg, love handles) suffices.

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So the lower body weight patient or low BMI patient is always the more challenging patient to take care of. So what I've tried to do for those patients is, number one, if you have access to go get a DEXA to look at your body composition, that will help because that helps people understand where, if they have fat, where it is. Because everybody comes in grabbing these little pieces of tissue on their waist and tummies and telling me they're fat. Which of course that's not super helpful. Yeah, I can imagine. So for me, we want to always transfer and make a difference. So if someone's low bmi, you're going to have to take fat from more than one area. And there are four kind of standard areas that we look at for acquisition of the fat. So inner outer thighs, abdomen. Of course, typically the area that people will have accumulation of fat that's super helpful is the love handle lower back area. So that ends up being a very common source. And you may access all of those if you're low bmi. If you're, you know, mid, you have enough fat distribution, maybe you can concentrate just on like love handles or an area that's bothering you.