Facial Autologous Fat Grafting & G-Stem Lift in Beverly Hills | Dr. Daniel Golshani

Most people think about facial aging in terms of what has moved downward. The jowls. The nasolabial folds. The neck. And they are right that gravity and structural descent are significant contributors to an aged appearance.

But there is a second, equally powerful process happening simultaneously: deflation.

From our mid-thirties onward, the facial fat compartments that give the face its youthful three-dimensionality begin to reduce in volume. The malar fat pad, which in youth sits high on the cheekbone creating the lifted, full quality that reads as healthy and young, diminishes and descends. The periorbital fat that cushions the under-eye area thins, creating the hollow, shadowed appearance that no amount of concealer fully addresses. The temples hollow. The lips thin. The fine lines around the mouth deepen not because the skin has stretched but because the volume beneath it has retreated.

This is why patients who address only the structural, lifting component of facial aging sometimes find the result falls short of what they hoped for. A face that has been lifted but not volumized can look tighter, but it does not necessarily look younger. Youth is not just about position. It is about fullness, softness, and three-dimensional presence. And those qualities are what facial autologous fat grafting restores.

What Is Autologous Facial Fat Grafting?

Autologous fat grafting is the process of harvesting fat from one area of your own body, processing it for transfer, and injecting it into the face to restore lost volume. The word autologous simply means that the tissue comes from you. There is no foreign substance, no synthetic filler, and no manufactured material involved at any stage.

Fat is typically harvested from areas where it is naturally abundant and where a slimming effect is welcome: the abdomen, the flanks, the inner thighs, or the lower back. The harvesting is performed through small, precisely placed incisions using gentle liposuction technique designed to preserve the viability of the fat cells being collected. The more intact the fat cells remain during harvest, the better they survive once transferred.

Once harvested, the fat is processed to separate and concentrate the viable adipose cells from the surrounding fluid, blood, and cellular debris. It is then injected into the face in precisely calibrated micro-amounts, layered through the target zones to maximize contact with the surrounding tissue and blood supply, which is what determines whether the grafted fat survives and becomes a permanent part of the face’s new contours.

The fat that settles is yours for the long term, integrating into the blood supply and behaving as native facial tissue, aging naturally alongside the rest of your face.

The G-Stem Lift: Dr. Golshani’s Proprietary Approach

Standard fat grafting is a well-established procedure. What Dr. Golshani has developed goes a step further.

The G-Stem Lift is Dr. Golshani’s proprietary fat processing technique, developed to concentrate the regenerative adipose-derived stem cells within the harvested fat before it is transferred to the face. Adipose tissue is naturally rich in regenerative cells that play a role in tissue repair, collagen production, and the overall quality and resilience of the skin above the graft site. By specifically enhancing the concentration of these cells in the processed fat, the G-Stem technique does something that standard fat grafting does not.

It does not just replace volume. It contributes to the biological regeneration of the tissue it is placed within.

Patients who undergo the G-Stem Lift frequently notice not only the volumetric improvement expected from fat grafting, but improvements in skin quality, texture, and luminosity in the areas treated, effects that reflect the regenerative activity of the concentrated stem cell component rather than the volume alone.

This is what makes the G-Stem Lift a genuinely proprietary procedure, not a rebranding of a standard technique, but a refinement in processing that produces a qualitatively different result.

Where Fat Grafting Makes the Greatest Difference

The zones of the face that respond most meaningfully to autologous fat grafting with the G-Stem technique are the zones where volume loss is both most visible and most aging in its effect:

The Under-Eye Area
The hollow beneath the lower eyelid, sometimes called the tear trough, is one of the most aging features a face can carry and one of the most difficult to address. When it is caused by volume loss in the periorbital fat compartment rather than by lower eyelid skin or fat herniation, fat grafting addresses it directly and durably. The shadow disappears. The transition between the lower lid and the upper cheek softens into something continuous and natural.

The Cheeks and Malar Region
Descended and deflated malar fat pads are among the defining features of a face that has aged past a certain point. Fat grafting restores the three-dimensional fullness of the upper cheek, lifting the optical impression of the face and restoring the high-cheekbone quality that reads as youthful. When combined with a cheek lift or midface lift, the structural repositioning of the malar fat pad and the volumetric restoration work in concert to produce a result that neither procedure achieves alone.

The Temples
Temple hollowing is one of the most consistently overlooked signs of facial aging, and one of the most significant contributors to a face that looks skeletal or drawn. Fat grafting to the temples restores the smooth, gently convex contour of a younger temporal region and creates a visual continuity between the forehead, the cheekbone, and the lateral face that is profoundly rejuvenating in its effect.

The Nasolabial and Perioral Region
The fine lines and creases around the mouth that deepen with age respond well to precise, conservative fat grafting that restores the soft tissue volume beneath them. The nasolabial fold, when partially driven by volume loss in the medial cheek rather than entirely by malar descent, benefits from fat grafting as a complement to the structural work done by a deep plane facelift.

The Jawline and Chin
In patients who want additional definition along the jawline or subtle augmentation of a recessed chin without an implant, carefully placed fat grafting can enhance the skeletal impression of the lower face and contribute to the sharp, defined jawline quality that is one of the most consistent markers of youth.

Facial Fat Grafting vs. Dermal Fillers: Why the Comparison Matters

Patients frequently ask how fat grafting differs from injectable dermal fillers, and the distinction is worth understanding clearly before choosing between them.

Dermal fillers, whether hyaluronic acid-based or otherwise, are temporary. Most require repeat treatment every six to eighteen months to maintain their effect. Over time, and with repeated treatment, the pattern of filler placement can become inconsistent, and the cumulative volume can distort the natural proportions of the face in ways that become progressively harder to correct.

Autologous fat grafting with the G-Stem technique is, by contrast, largely permanent. The fat that integrates and establishes its blood supply remains. It does not dissolve, migrate in unpredictable patterns, or require maintenance injections. It is your own tissue, living in your face, behaving as native tissue because that is exactly what it is.

For patients who have been maintaining their facial volume with repeated filler treatments and find themselves considering a more definitive solution, the G-Stem Lift is frequently the procedure that ends that cycle.

The G-Stem Lift as Part of a Complete Facial Rejuvenation

Fat grafting with the G-Stem technique is most powerfully deployed not as a standalone procedure, but as a component of a comprehensive facial rejuvenation plan. Dr. Golshani routinely incorporates the G-Stem Lift into combined surgical plans that address the full picture of facial aging:

• Deep Plane Facelift for structural repositioning of the lower face, jowls, and neck, with the G-Stem Lift restoring the volume that lifting alone cannot replace
• Neck Lift with Corset Platysmaplasty to address the neck and submental region in patients where that zone has also aged
• Cheek Lift and Midface Lift with fat grafting to complement the structural repositioning of the malar fat pad with volumetric restoration of the periorbital and lateral midface zones
• Blepharoplasty combined with periorbital fat grafting to address both the structural lid issues and the volume hollowing that contributes to under-eye aging
• Buccal Fat Excision and Repositioning alongside fat grafting in patients where selective reduction of lower cheek fullness and targeted volume restoration elsewhere work together to sculpt and balance the face
• Laser Resurfacing to improve skin quality and surface texture in a way that complements the volumetric and structural surgical work

The philosophy behind every combined plan is the same. Volume without structure produces a pillowy, overfilled result. Structure without volume produces a tighter face that still reads as older than it should. The two must work together, and the G-Stem Lift is the volumetric component that completes the picture.

What Separates a Natural Result From an Overfilled One

The failure mode of facial volume restoration is one most people have seen, even if they could not name exactly what went wrong. The face that looks round rather than lifted. The cheeks that appear inflated rather than full. The periorbital area that reads as puffy rather than rested. These are the results of too much volume placed without anatomical precision, or volume placed in the wrong zones for the patient’s specific anatomy.

Dr. Golshani’s approach to fat grafting is built on the same anatomical precision that defines his surgical work. He places conservatively, layering micro-aliquots of fat through the target zones rather than depositing volume in bulk. He considers the relationship between each grafted zone and the zones surrounding it. And he accounts for the fact that some percentage of the grafted fat will not survive, calibrating his placement accordingly.

The result is a face that looks fuller and younger without announcing why. That invisibility is the standard, and it applies to every component of the G-Stem Lift.