4
August
2010

Dr. Sydney Coleman presents treatment of radiation injury0

Sydney Coleman of New York City Presents Studies which Validate the use of Fat Grafting to Reverse Radiation Damage

At the annual meeting of the European Association of Plastic Surgeons this year, Sydney Coleman presented cutting edge studies which verified in animal models the healing effect of structural fat grafts on skin that had been exposed to therapeutic radiation.  For over a decade, Dr. Coleman has been treating patients with damaged tissue due to radiation injury.  Not only has he witnessed the survival of the fat grafts, but also he has noted a significant improvement in the quality of skin in almost every patient.

The research was performed in the laboratories at NYU Medical Center.  Dr. Coleman reports, “Our research verifies my observations over the last ten or more years that fat does not just survive when placed into irradiated tissues, but it reverses the radiation damage in almost every case.”

In the NYU study, mice were exposed to enough radiation to cause hair loss (alopecia) and skin damage over a four-week period.  At four weeks, fat grafts that Dr. Coleman personally processed using the “Coleman technique” were transplanted under the radiation damaged skin.  Other mice were treated similarly using normal saline (saltwater).   In the mice treated with fat grafts, first the blood supply increased and then the hair grew back, the scarring reversed and the skin softened.  In the mice treated with normal saline, the hair loss and scarring progressed and the mice never healed.”

Dr. Coleman further comments, “these findings verify that this type of fat grafting alleviates radiation damage to skin and underlying tissues by improving the blood supply and softening scarring.”  This process is probably due at least in part to stem cells and hormones present in structural fat grafts. “The best way to think of these primitive cells present in fat grafts is as ‘repair cells’ that actively maintain your body by repairing damage as it occurs daily.”  (If you scratch your skin, or break a bone, et cetera).  ”When placed into an area of subacute damage such as a radiation injury, the ‘repair cells’ and hormones heal the tissues.  This is truly an example of using a person’s own body to heal themselves…regenerative medicine.”

Surgeons are hesitant to operate on body areas which have been treated with radiation because they heal poorly or not at all after a surgical procedure.  Recent evidence points to the healing of radiation injury and even improvement in the appearance of aging skin by fat grafting to an area.  The healing most likely takes place by bringing in stem cells (or repair cells) which build new blood vessels and capillaries inthe irradiated skin, muscle and bone.

Dr. Coleman and several plastic surgeons in Europe, have been using his fat grafting technique to cure radiation damage in many breast cancer patients.  An extraordinary reconstruction of a jaw deformity from therapeutic radiation was mentioned in this blog last year.  Click here to read the posting.  Dr. Coleman and other plastic surgeons in Europe have had success in reversing alopecia (hair loss) and other scalp damage from therapeutic radiation.

Dr. Coleman published his experiences with the treatment of therapeutic radiation damage first in 2006 in the Journal of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery.

© Coleman 2010

.                           Written by the office staff at TriBeCa Plastic Surgery

More examples of reconstruction using Dr. Coleman’s specific technique can be found at www.lipostructure.com.

Further reading:

Posted: Breast LipoStructure, Facial Reconstruction, Fat Grafting Research, Home

27
July
2010

Dr. Sydney Coleman Introduces Improvements to Fat Grafting0

Sydney Coleman, a plastic surgeon in New York City, continues to improve fat grafting methods

Dr. Sydney Coleman is recognized as the world’s leading expert on fat grafting.  It has been through his perseverance and insight over the last 22 years that fat grafting is becoming an important part of medicine.  In the last four years, Dr. Coleman has improved dramatically the method he uses for fat grafting. The advanced methods he now uses for fat grafting not only increase the predictability of fat graft survival; but also, more importantly, the new techniques maximize the reparative effect of grafted fat on the tissue around which it is placed.  Using his newly developed method, fat grafted under sun damaged and aging skin repairs the overlying skin.  The eyelid of the patient below demonstrates the dramatic change that grafting fat in one procedure can have on overlying wrinkles.

Before (above) and two years after one procedure to lower eyelids in a 76 year old with no other treatment to her lower eyelids

Fat grafted under skin in the lower eyelid repairs the skin to a more radiant, youthful appearance

Probably through the same mechanism of repair, grafted fat has been shown to repair the tissue damage caused by radiation from cancer treatment.  Dr. Coleman has been actively participating in laboratory research at NYU Medical Center, which has enabled him to verify his new advances in grafting fat.  This new way of grafting fat increases the predictability of the volume of fat grafted, but more importantly, it maximizes the effect of grafted fat on the tissues around which it is placed.

Dr. Coleman has been speaking at meetings worldwide over the last few months to relate the advances that he has made in the last five years in fat grafting.  In June alone he has given lectures in Manchester, UK; Ghent, Belgium; Aachen, Germany; Iceland; and Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Earlier this year, he gave a series of lectures at a maxillofacial/craniofacial meeting in Baltimore, at the Egyptian Society of Plastic Surgery meeting outside of Cairo, at an international hand meeting in Paris, at a meeting in Los Cabos in Baja California, at a symposium of the Plastic Surgery Education Foundation meeting in Snowbird, Utah, at a breast meeting in Miami, at the American Alpine Workshop in Plastic Surgery meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and at a Regenerative Surgery meeting in Rome.

And Dr. Coleman continues to travel to Pittsburg monthly to use fat grafting on soldiers with facial war injuries.  This is part of an Armed Forces project at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center supervised by the US Department of Defense.

.                           Written by the office staff at TriBeCa Plastic Surgery

To read the Cosmetic Surgery Times article on the use of fat grafts with stem cells for rejuvenation, please click here.

For further articles about this subject

Posted: Facial Reconstruction, Fat Grafting Research, Home, Natural Facial Rejuvenation