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Recently, I had a 12 year-old patient who fell and split her left upper lip when she was 9 months old. The lip was repaired at UCLA Hospital but the wound separated, leaving her with a depressed, discolored scar. At age four, she had a mole removed from her chin, which also healed very poorly and was depressed on both ends. She had fillers injected which were extremely painful, did not last very long, but temporarily improved the deformity- and did not want to continue this for a lifetime. She was sufficiently self-conscious to be willing to undergo revision surgery to permanently improve the situation.
I confided that surgical revision- which would involve cutting out both scars- would not guarantee significant improvement, and that she would have to endure at least a year of swelling and redness as the new scars matured. In other words, she would have to get worse to get better.
After discussion with her and her mother (who is a physician), we settled on a plan to fill the depressed scars with her own natural fat by injecting it directly into the skin. In the operating room, a small amount of fat was removed from the lower abdomen under extremely low vacuum liposuction. The fat was washed and centrifuged. The lowest (most dense and rich in stem cells) portion of the fat (closest to the tip of the syringe) was injected via tiny needles into the left upper lip indentation. Impressive improvement and resolution of the concavity was noted. The chin indentation on both ends were also injected.
The remaining portion of this “supercharged” stem-cell rich fat was then prepared for extraction of the stem cells and stromal vascular fraction for injection into the scars. It was emulsified to destroy the fat cells and then strained through a sterile Nano screen to remove the cells. The liquid was then centrifuged to separate into three segments: oil, yellow Nanoserum and pink Nanoserum. The oil was discarded. The yellow particulate Nano Stem Serum was injected directly into both ends of the transverse chin scars (where they were indented). The clear pink Nano Stem Serum was injected directly into the left upper lip scar.
The “After” photos (to view, click “Natural Fat Transfer”) are taken one full year after her procedure. She notes that she is thrilled that not only is the depression corrected, but that the scars look much better. Additionally, the dark discoloration (particularly at the top of the upper lip scar) has completed faded to normal. The chin scar has faded as well. Note that she is not wearing makeup in any photographs and how the texture of her scars has improved as well as the color and the indentations.
