Treatment for Aging Hands
The hands (along with the chest décolleté area) are one of the biggest age revealers on the body. The hands are the most frequently exposed to the sun and harsh weather…..usually with the least protection. The hands also spend a lot of time in wet environments, from washing dishes to washing the car. Because the hands have some of the thinnest skin on the body (the eyelids are the thinnest) with very little fat. As a result of this anatomy, veins on the hand become very prominent as we age. These thinning veiny hands, combined with liver spots, age them considerably in appearance.
To rejuvenate the back of the hands and lessen the bony, veiny appearance, fat injections offer a good solution. Fat is removed from somewhere on your body through liposuction, concentrated, and then injected and smoothed under the skin on the back of the hands. There is very little swelling and bruising and no pain after, with the exception of the harvest site. The result is instantaneous. Overfilling is usually necessary as there is some resorption of some portion of the injected fat. What you see at 3 months after surgery is usually fairly permanent. While results are ‘permanent’, you will continue to lose fat as you age, so additional sessions may eventually be necessary.
Because the fat needs to be sterile when transferred to the hands, the procedure usually performed in the operating room under sedation. The hands can easily be injected under local anesthesia, it is the harvest of the fat that often requires a little more comfort than local anesthesia can provide. It is often part of many different plastic surgery procedures performed at once, you may be asleep for it as well.
It will take about six weeks to see the final results from fat injections the hands. In the first week or two after placement the hand will very pffy and ‘too full’. Once this goes away it is very common to have a few lumps here and there which are best treated by manual digital massage to work them out. The hands will also feel a little stiff for a few weeks after the procedure. By six weeks after the hands will again feel soft and supple and the amount of fat that is retained will be seen.
Dr Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana