A Prospective Pilot Study Comparing Rate of Processing Techniques in Autologous Fat Grafting.

Background: Autologous fat grafting (AFG) is increasing in popularity to address a variety of defects. There is interest in developing techniques to harvest, process and inject fat to improve clinical outcomes as well as operative efficiency.

Objectives: The purpose of this pilot study is to compare the rate of graft processing of two commercially available systems for graft preparation.

Methods: Twenty consecutive cases using an active filtration system-AF were observed followed by twenty consecutive cases using a passive filtration system-PF to compare efficiency rate. Fat processing rate was quantified in milliliters/minute.

Results: Forty patients underwent autologous fat grafting with no differences in patient characteristics between the groups. There was one incidence of palpable fat necrosis per group (5%). For all patients, this was the first fat grafting procedure; 20% of patients (n=4 per group) had additional fat grafting. Overall, the rate of adipose tissue preparation was significantly higher with the active system-AF compared to the passive system-PF (19.8 ml/min vs 5.3 ml/min, p ≤0.001). The resulting percent of graftable fat was comparable (AF: 41% vs. PF: 42%; p=0.83).

Conclusions: Time and motion studies such as this provide a means to systematically document each of the steps involved in fat grafting in a reliable fashion. The authors demonstrate significantly higher rate of lipoaspirate processing using an active filtration system compared to a passive system. Further large-scale studies of the efficacy and cost analysis of autologous fat grafting are a necessary component of determining best practices in the field.