Viability of preadipocytes in vitro: the influence of local anesthetics and pH

Autogenous fat transfer with lipoinjection for soft tissue augmentation is a commonly used surgical technique. Abundant donor tissue availability and relative ease of harvesting have made autologous fat an attractive soft tissue filler. The overall reliability of this technique is often disputed, and different authors describe different results after autologous fat transplantation despite using similar techniques. In this study, we examined the influence of different local anesthetics commonly used in fat harvest and the pH of the anesthetic solution on the viability of harvested preadipocytes.

Preadipocytes were incubated with 1% lidocaine, 1% articaine plus epinephrine 1:200,000, 0.75% ropivacaine, and 1% prilocaine or our standardized tumescent solution (1 L of 0.9% sodium chloride solution plus 25 mL of 1% articaine plus epinephrine 1:200,000 plus 25 mL of bicarbonate) for 30 minutes. Additionally, we incubated cells with the local anesthetics as described above but diluted 1:2 with phosphate buffered saline (pH 7.4). Viability was measured using trypan blue dying as well as propidium iodine staining and fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis.

There are significant differences in the viability of preadipocytes under the influence of various local anesthetics.

Our data could partially explain the varying results after autogenous fat transfer.