Before knowing something about the fat injection, let us know what is the Romberg’s disease. This disease is also known as Parry Romberg’s disease or hemifacial atrophy. As the name suggests, this disease affects half of the face of young individuals between 12 to 25 years of age. It can extend to involve even scalp, neck or bones of the face and skull bones when the onset of the disease is at an early age. The affected part of the face (usually fat and muscles under the skin) starts to atrophy (shrink) on its own. This phenomenon starts spontaneously and can’t be controlled once it initiates itself. The researchers have postulated various theories for this disease, but the definite cause of the disease is yet to be known. After this atrophy (shrinking) of facial fat and muscles is initiated, it progresses for a year or longer and can extend to involve bones also. There is no treatment available at present to stop the progression of this disease. The disease progression stops on its own within a year or longer. The most difficult part of the treatment is that a plastic surgeon cannot attempt to correct the facial disfigurement of the patient until the disease burns out itself (stops progressing).

After disease progression stops, the deformity is assessed by a plastic surgeon in a scientific way and a reconstructive plan is chosen accordingly. In previous times, the soft tissue (muscles and fat) deficit was replaced with various kinds of tissue transferred from a patient’s own body like de-epithelialized skin, skin and fat, various flaps etc. But recently, patient’s own body fat (autologous fat) has emerged as an excellent alternative to reconstruct the soft tissue deficits of Romberg’s disease-stricken patient.

Here is a young boy of 19 years age presented to us with Romberg’s disease. We waited for a year until the disease completely burned out itself. His reconstruction was planned with autologous fat injection. Under anesthesia, the patient’s own fat was harvested from his abdominal wall. And after some mechanical procession, that fat was injected with a special cannula underneath the skin of the affected part of the face. Immediately after the procedure, both the sides of the patient’s face were looking similar to each other without any trace of the previous deficit. But, this is not the case in a long run. Because more than 50% of fat usually get reabsorbed in the patient’s own body over a period of next 45 days. And we need to repeat this procedure of fat injection 2 -3 times. Probably the only negative aspect of this procedure is having to repeat it multiple times, otherwise, this procedure is very safe and does not lead to any long-term problems even in the remote future. Apart from filling the atrophied (shrunken) tissues, fat brings new blood supply to overlying skin which improves luster, texture, and color of the affected skin. And this is the biggest advantage because it boosts the patient’s self-confidence.

If you are suffering from Romberg’s disease and want to enhance your facial harmony, please contact us on +91 97259 99526 Or you can reach us by filling Contact Us.