Tribeca Plastic Surgery Blog - New York Plastic Surgeon Dr. Sydney Coleman » Fat Grafting Research

Sydney Coleman starts Tweeting

Dr. Coleman — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:56:39 +0000

In Anticipation of New Website, Syd Coleman Starts Tweeting

The completely renovated lipostructure.com website will be online by early February. In anticipation, I will begin tweeting from on a regular basis at Syd Coleman @lipostructure to inform people of the potential of LipoStructure® and advances in the use of stromal vascular fraction (SVF) and adipose derived stem cells.

LipoStructure® is the particular brand of fat grafting developed by me in the late 1980’s and now used worldwide. As fat grafting has become more popular, people have noted that the fat does more than fill; it can repair and rejuvenate the tissues into which it is placed.

Recent scientific studies have determined that fat tissue has the highest concentration of stem cells of any tissue in the body. These “stem cells” appear to repair damage in our bodies. I have seen improvement in skin quality and scarring in my own patients over the last two decades.

Stromal Vascular Fraction (SVF) is the name for fat tissue with the fat cells removed. The SVF is composed of a very high concentration of stem cells. Research is ongoing to determine the benefits of SVF in treating a variety of conditions seen in plastic surgery and many other medical specialties.

Sydney Coleman, MD

Treating Facial War Injuries with Coleman Fat Grafts Update

Dr. Coleman — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 20:00:11 +0000

A New Report of United States Department of Defense Project to Study the Use of Coleman Fat Grafts in Facial War Injuries

Dr. Coleman continues to travel monthly to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) to operated on soldiers with facial war injuries using Coleman Fat Grafts. The Sunday Pittsburgh Post-Gazette updated their previous report of the ongoing studies at UPMC. The following is an excerpt from the news article:

Sculpting with fat can restore faces (excerpt of original article)

New techniques use fat cells to smooth visages of veterans devastated by injury

Sunday, March 06, 2011
By Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Robin Rombach/Post-Gazette Jeremy Feldbusch lost his sight after a piece of artillery shrapnel tore through his skull in Iraq in 2003. He underwent a new procedure that transferred fat from other parts of his body to fill in the side temple area of his head

Jeremy Feldbusch lost his sight after a piece of artillery shrapnel tore through his skull in Iraq in 2003. He underwent a new procedure that transferred fat from other parts of his body to fill in the side temple area of his head.

Jeremy Feldbusch can’t see the results of the special cosmetic surgery he recently got — but he’s pleased when people tell him what a good job the doctors did.

Mr. Feldbusch is blind because a piece of artillery shrapnel tore through his skull in Iraq in 2003. In January, UPMC surgeon J. Peter Rubin took fat from his abdomen and thighs and injected it into cavities that his war injuries had left on his face.

Dr. Rubin, recently named chief of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at UPMC, has received $4.5 million from the Department of Defense for his fat resculpting project, and so far has performed the surgery on 11 injured veterans.

Using techniques developed by New York plastic surgeon Sydney Coleman, who has assisted on the surgeries here, Dr. Rubin’s team removes fat cells from a patient’s body, centrifuges them to collect the most active cells, and injects theminto injury sites using tiny tubes that can be as narrow as an intravenous needle .Fat injections have been used in cosmetic surgery for years, but the problem has been that in many cases, the fat is absorbed by surrounding tissues and the work has to be done over.

Dr. Coleman’s centrifuge technique is designed to prevent that by concentrating the fat cells, which helps them to thrive and grow new blood vessels once they are injected.

In a broader sense, Dr. Rubin’s project is part of a fast-growing movement around the world to use fat stem cells to generate new tissues for all sorts of conditions, from breast reconstruction to growing new bone.

Most human tissues contain stem cells that can generate new cells of the same type to promote healing. Fat stem cells can not only grow new fat cells, but in the lab, they have been turned into bone, cartilage, skin and muscle.

In Japan, doctors have now used fat stem cell injections in hundreds of women for breast enlargements, and report that the women think the results feel and look much more natural than synthetic implants, he said.

UPMC’s Dr. Rubin is also working with fat stem cells for reconstruction in women who have had breast cancer. Because stem cells can promote tissue growth and new blood supply, there has been some concern that these injections might trigger a recurrence of the breast cancer, he said, “but our best evidence now shows if you have dormant cancer cells present, they are not likely to be reactivated by fat stem cells.”

While some of the fat that Dr. Rubin injected into Mr. Feldbusch and the other injured soldiers consists of stem cells as well, the next step of his research will be to grow additional fat stem cells in the lab and “enrich” the mixture of fat cells that are put into the injury sites.

Fat stem cells, like those now growing in Mr. Feldbusch’s face, have two complementary benefits

In some cases, they remain fat cells when they are put in the body, but can promote blood vessel growth and healing in other tissues, which has been shown in experimental work on heart disease patients. In other cases, they can morph into completely different kinds of tissue

And they have one other advantage, Dr. Gimble said: People are happy to donate them. “There is no other tissue that someone will actually pay their doctors to take out of them,” he said.

First published on March 6, 2011 at 12:00 am

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11065/1130053-114.stm#ixzz1Gtdir2DF

Dr. Coleman of New York featured in an Article in The Times Magazine

Dr. Coleman — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:56:45 +0000

An excerpt of the article written by Hermione Hoby for the London Times Magazine follows:

“The Surgeon Who Injects Women with Fat

Well, they do ask him to… Just when we’ve got used to fillers for the face, along comes a remarkable body resculpting technique”

Dr. Sydney Coleman holding a fat grafting cannula in his operating theater surrounded by his nurse, physician's assistant, and centrifuge Photo by Mike McGregor

“It is the last place in the world you’d expect to hear someone praising fat. But, in a chic Manhattan plastic-surgery clinic populated by impossibly lean women, Dr Sydney Coleman is doing just that, while explaining a new technique with radical implications for cosmetic and reconstructive work.

LipoStructure, or lipomodelling as it’s also known, involves taking a patient’s own body fat and reinjecting it to sculpt, fill, correct and enhance other areas. We may have got used to the idea of injectable fillers for the face; now it’s body recontouring that’s the growth industry. And, for more and more surgeons, fat is the tool of choice. In the right hands, the results are extraordinary: it can fill scars and hollows, smooth creases, retouch cellulite dimples, as well as plump and sculpt breasts and bottoms.

One of the most popular procedures Dr Coleman offers is taking fat from the abdomen and reinjecting it into the breasts, which is, as one surgeon puts it, “the answer to a maiden’s prayer” – weight loss, waist definition and breast enhancement all in one procedure.

But aren’t people squeamish about using their own fat? “They love it,” Dr Coleman says, with a big smile. “The abdomen and love handles are always my first choice because that makes the woman thinner.” Fat can, of course, be taken from anywhere it’s not wanted on the body and, as Dr Coleman says, “There’s no blood and no cuts. There are just these little puncture sites.”

Coleman first started investigating fat-grafting in the late Eighties when, he explains, “I’d go to a cocktail party and women would pull me aside and complain about their thighs and abdomens after liposuction. So that was the original motivation – to help these women who were coming to me saying, ‘What am I supposed to do now?’?”

Back when liposuction was a new procedure, many surgeons would remove too much fat from thighs, leaving them hollowed and irregular, he says. “I visited people in California and Virginia and spoke to people in France who were doing fat-grafting for the correction of liposuction deformities, but they’d never had good experiences. So I looked at what they were doing and tried to do it a little differently. I tried to bring it down to more basic principles.”

The principles may be basic, but the work is also extremely precise. Coleman’s technique involves harvesting fat very gently through low-vacuum cannulas before using a centrifuge to separate the oil and water. (Traditional liposuction techniques, which involve exerting a lot of negative pressure, can harm the fat and increase the chances of it dying once it’s been grafted, meaning it forms hard lumps.) The treated fat is then reinjected, one droplet at a time, in a lattice formation. It’s a delicate and painstaking process, with no room for error.

The surgery’s “two-for-one” aspect is not its only appeal. Unlike most conventional breast augmentation surgery, there is no scarring. There are also none of the aesthetic and practical problems that come with implants, and fat-grafting affords the surgeon more control – and room for artistry. “With silicone, you’ve got a bag and you make a hole and stuff it in the hole,” says Dr Coleman. “It’s a prefabricated volume. But with fat-grafting, you have to completely visualise everything in three dimensions. You can really shape the breast and improve projection and I’m able to go anywhere – to make cleavage, to feather into the side.” Some of the most impressive before-and-after pictures he shows involve subtle but radical changes to breast shape: an obvious implant, for example, is edged with fat and instantly becomes natural-looking.

Linda Francipane, a 44-year-old hairdresser from Queens, was an early patient of Dr Coleman’s and underwent breast augmentation surgery having spent “many, many months” researching her options. This included speaking to a lot of strippers about their implants. “I’d say 40 to 50 per cent had some kind of issue with them – whether they leaked, or the look, or the feel,” she says.

She was nonetheless determined to do something about her flat chest. “You’d be out clubbing,” she says, “and all the hot girls had tremendous boobs and I really had nothing, like nothing. This was the time when everybody was getting implants and I was like a little boy. I just wanted to get in the game.”

When a friend told her about Dr Coleman’s technique, “It seemed like a fabulous alternative to putting something foreign in my body.” She went from “below an A” to a 36C and says, “The way he did them, you can’t tell. It’s terrific. It changed my life.” She says she’s still receiving compliments.

Tal, a 36-year-old from Portland, Oregon, is another of Dr Coleman’s patients. She had implants when she was 19 but was so dissatisfied, she had them removed after just nine months. “I couldn’t breathe properly. It was just a very foreign feeling,” she explains.

As soon as she heard about breast augmentation by fat-grafting, she booked a consultation with Dr Coleman. “I thought nothing could be worse than what I had, so, even if he messed up, it would still be better. I had nerve damage from the breast implants, and stretch marks, and some scarring from under the nipple where it had been cut open. The tissue gets so stretched that I was actually flatter after breast implants.”

She wanted “breasts that were heavier at the bottom – a kind of Seventies look. I wasn’t comfortable being showy – my identity is really that of a flat-chested girl. It’s hard to create a natural-looking shape; I don’t know how he does it, but it’s just perfect – exactly what I wanted. He’s an artist. I don’t know if I’d trust anyone else.”

Tal also adds, “I don’t even wear a bra,” before laughing and reflecting, “I probably should, since I made such a large investment.””

Dr Sydney Coleman Lectures on LipoStructure Worldwide

Dr. Coleman — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:46:48 +0000

Although the technique of fat grafting that Dr. Coleman introduced in the early 1990’s was a powerful tool, he is constantly working to improve the technique. Over the last six years, Dr. Coleman has refined his version of fat grafting to not only create a more predictable fullness, but also to regenerate aging, radiation-damaged, sun-damaged and scarred skin much more dependably.

Dr. Coleman is currently participating in research at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and NYU Langone Medical Center, as well as collaborating with several foreign projects. He is committed to improving the care of patients by constantly striving to advance our knowledge of fat grafting and especially of its regenerative potential. Today’s version of Coleman fat grafting is more reliable compared to ten years ago, or even four or five years ago.

As a result of the improvements in the Coleman technique, he has been teaching a great deal recently all over the world. We recently updated on his blog almost two years of the lectures, panels, conferences, seminars, and workshops he has given Worldwide. We are proud of his contributions to plastic surgery and medicine as he continues to advance and study the use of fat grafting. Please click on “Recent Lectures Given by Sydney Coleman MD“ for a list of the lectures.

Dr. Sydney Coleman presents treatment of radiation injury

Dr. Coleman — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:41:11 +0000

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.

. 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.

Dr. Sydney Coleman Introduces Improvements to Fat Grafting

Dr. Coleman — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:41:55 +0000

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