Buccal Fat Restoration

Buccal fat restoration adds volume back to the cheeks and midface after it has been lost — most often to correct a buccal fat removal that took away too much and left the face looking gaunt, hollow, or prematurely aged. It can also address age-related thinning of the buccal fat pad.

The most durable option is facial fat grafting: microfat is harvested from elsewhere on the body, purified, and injected into the buccal fat pad — often through a tiny puncture at the corner of the mouth — to rebuild natural cheek contour. For a nonsurgical route, biostimulatory injectables such as Sculptra or hyperdilute Radiesse gradually restore fullness by stimulating the body's own collagen over several sessions; standard hyaluronic-acid fillers work poorly here because the buccal hollow has little underlying bony support.

Good candidates are healthy adults unhappy with over-hollowed cheeks or midface volume loss. Fat grafting is usually an outpatient procedure under local anesthesia, often with sedation, with most people back to normal activity within one to two weeks as swelling and bruising settle. Because some transferred fat is naturally reabsorbed, a touch-up session is occasionally needed to reach the final result.