Local Anesthetics: Use and Effects in Autologous fat Grafting

Abstract

Autologous fat grafting has been used for over a century and is considered as a technique of choice for soft tissue filling in plastic and reconstructive surgery. However, the critical point of this technique is fat graft survival. In order to assure best efficiency of adipose grafts, new techniques and procedures have been optimized in order to avoid graft resorption and thus, to improve graft survival. Among the steps involved in lipofilling process, some researchers and surgeons have inter alia focused on the effects of local anaesthetics on adipose graft. After an overview on the different local anaesthetics commonly used and their mode of action, this review focuses on the effects of these drugs on non-neuronal cells with special emphasis on adipose tissue and adipose-derived stem cells. Moreover, while there is no consensus on the best way how to handle adipose tissue prior to its injection, this review describes how to get rid of the adverse effects of local anaesthetics.