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Evaluating the Role of Rectus Abdominis Fat Transfer (RAFT) in Improving Muscle Thickness: Does it Really Work? A
Giuliano B Borille1, Gustavo A Pereira Filho2, Mariana Zancanaro1
1LipoMD Prime Institute, 1450, 24 de outubro avenue, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
Background:
Looking for an adequate solution for those patients who desire abdominal definition, but are not candidates for liposuction alone, Danilla developed a technique, using selective fat grafting into the rectus abdominis (RAFT) to increase the muscle volume in addition to selective liposuction and abdominoplasty to provide an optimal body contouring.
Objective:
To determine whether intramuscular fat grafting in the rectus abdominis muscles leads to an increase in muscle thickness after one year.
Methods:
This is a prospective cohort study, from a single center, carried out over 24 months (October 2021-September 2023). Sixty-two patients who underwent lipoabdominoplasty and RAFT, had their rectus abdominis cross section measured by ultrasound pre- and 12 months postoperatively. To compare the muscle thickness, a paired t-test statistic was used. A p-value of 0.05 was considered statistically significant (IBM SPSS Statistics V26).
Results:
After 1 year, all 62 patients showed an increase in the size of the rectus muscle cross section, although only 58 (94%) had fat identifiable in the US. Preoperatively, the mean muscle cross-sectional size was 1, 4 cm. After RAFT, overall mean muscle cross section was 2, 3 cm (0, 9 cm/66.9% increase). When stratified into groups with and without identifiable fat, the group in which the graft remained showed greater increase than the group with no visible fat (69, 9% vs 19,6%).
Conclusion:
The RAFT provided a significant increase in the muscle cross section in most cases after 1 year. The presence of fat is related to a statistically significant increase in the muscle compartment (pack).
Level Of Evidence Ii:
This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .
