Written and medically reviewed by Prof Dr Srinjoy Saha, MS, MCh (Plastic Surgery), FACS, FRCS (Glasgow) · Last reviewed: 4 August 2026
Harvard Fellowship • Apollo Professor • PSF Achauer Award • Gold Medal • In Practice since 1998
The question most people arrive with is not whether buccal fat removal works. It does.
The question is what their face would look like in fifteen years. Because the internet is full of people who had it done at twenty-four and regret it at forty.
Faces hollow with age no matter what anyone does to them. Bone recedes, the ligaments loosen, and every fat pad in the face shrinks — the buccal pad included. What removal does is start that process early, in one specific place, and make it permanent there.
So the decision that matters is not whether to take fat out. It is what happens to it afterwards. Discarded, it is gone. Transplanted to the cheekbone and the chin, the same tissue goes back into the two places a face needs projection as it ages.
One fat pad. Taken from where it blunts the face, put back where it defines it.
Buccal fat transplant in Kolkata costs approximately ₹1,00,000 to ₹3,50,000. Only buccal fat pad removal costs much less. What determines your costs ↓
Examples of Buccal Fat Transplant
Buccal fat-pad removal · grafting to both malar eminences and chin · dimple creation · botulinum toxin to masseters
A young lady in her early thirties presented with a bulbous tip and weakened nasal support, causing the tip to slump with age. The surgical plan focused on restructuring the lower lateral cartilages to improve tip definition, while preserving or restoring tip support through suture techniques and a columellar strut graft. The emphasis was on long-term structural stability and a natural, unoperated appearance. Post-operative recovery was uneventful, and the tip position was maintained over time.
Buccal fat-pad removal · grafting to both malar eminences and chin · botulinum toxin to masseters · nanofat to under-eyes
A young man in his late twenties presented with a moderate dorsal hump and mild deviated septum. The surgery included hump reduction, with careful attention to preserving the internal nasal valve and maintaining natural dorsal lines. Aggressive reduction was avoided, and certain areas left untouched to preserve nasal function and breathing. The result shows a balanced profile without compromising the airway.
Buccal fat-pad removal · grafting to both malar eminences and chin · masseteric reduction with botulinum toxin
A young woman in her early twenties had a prior rhinoplasty elsewhere that resulted in a saddle nose deformity due to over-resection of the dorsal septum. The revision nose surgery involved reconstruction of the dorsal support using a porous absorbable implant, combined with tip reshaping. The focus was on restoring structural integrity and long-term stability. As the patient had a previous failed surgery, we were careful. Our plan was conservative and aimed at achieving a natural, stable outcome without any overcorrection.
Buccal fat-pad removal · grafting to both malar eminences and chin · dimple creation · neck liposuction
A young woman in her early twenties had a prior rhinoplasty elsewhere that resulted in a saddle nose deformity due to over-resection of the dorsal septum. The revision nose surgery involved reconstruction of the dorsal support using a porous absorbable implant, combined with tip reshaping. The focus was on restoring structural integrity and long-term stability. As the patient had a previous failed surgery, we were careful. Our plan was conservative and aimed at achieving a natural, stable outcome without any overcorrection.
What Buccal Fat Transplant Corrects
The shape being aimed at.
What reads as an attractive face now has sharper features, a smooth ogee curve running from the temple over the cheekbone to the jaw, and proportions closer to an inverted triangle — wide at the cheekbones, narrow at the chin.
That triangle needs work at three points, not one.
The three points.
The lower cheek is too full. The buccal fat pad sits below and behind the cheekbone. When it is prominent the face reads round and the cheekbone disappears into it.
The cheekbone is not projecting enough.
Removing fat does not create a cheekbone. It only stops hiding the absence of one. This is where most buccal fat removal goes wrong — the patient wanted a cheekbone and got a narrower round face.
The jaw is too wide.
In many South Asian faces the masseter is heavy, which squares the lower face and works against the triangle regardless of what is done above it.
What Buccal Fat Transplant Cannot Do
Six patterns account for most revision presentations. Find yours.
It cannot be undone.
The buccal fat pad does not grow back. Grafting can be repeated if the projection is less than planned; removal cannot be reversed if too much came out. Everything else on this page follows from that asymmetry.
It cannot give you the proportions in the reference photograph
Especially if that photograph is a phone camera held at arm's length, or an app. Those are not real proportions. A photograph taken at a metre with a standard lens is the comparison that matters.
It cannot lift.
If the complaint is sagging rather than fullness, this operation makes it worse — it removes the volume holding the skin out. The right conversation is a lift, and you will be told so.
It is not a one-off procedure.
The reduction is permanent. The projection is not — about two years on its own. Holding it longer means maintenance, and maintenance has a cost. It is a modest cost done the way it is done here, but it is not nothing, and you should know that before you book rather than after.
It cannot create bone.
Grafted fat sits on the cheekbone and follows its shape. Where the underlying bone is flat, the graft softens the transition. It does not build a projection the skeleton will not support.
It cannot stop the face ageing.
It changes what the face has to age with.
Where Is Your Roundness Coming From?
This decides the operation, and it is settled by examination rather than by photograph.
Fat is soft and moves when you press it. Buccal fat sits deep, in a discrete pocket below the cheekbone, and it does not shrink much with weight loss — which is why people who have lost fifteen kilos still have round cheeks.
Muscle is firm and it bulges when you clench. If your jaw widens when you bite down, the masseter is part of the problem and no amount of fat removal will fix it.
Bone does not move. A wide mandibular angle is skeletal, and neither fat nor botulinum toxin changes it.
Most people are a mixture, with each of these three weighted differently.
A plan that names only one of the three is treating whichever one the surgeon happens to operate on.
What Prof. Saha Does Differently & Why It Matters
Buccal fat transplant is planned as a step-by-step combination of several facial reconstruction procedures. Structure is added where needed and removed from areas where it is in excess.
Regenerative techniques such as vascularising nano fat and platelet derived growth factors are used selectively, based on the patient’s anatomy and the best available evidence.
How he plans a facial contouring with buccal fat transplantation
The fat is not thrown away
In most buccal fat removal the pad comes out and is discarded. That is the standard of the operation almost everywhere, and it is not incompetent — for a patient who genuinely only needs reduction and already has good cheekbone projection, it is the correct, simpler and cheaper operation. If that is you, take it.
For everyone else it discards two things.
Volume you are about to need. The cheekbone and the chin are exactly where a contoured face requires more projection, and a graftable amount of the patient's own tissue has just been removed from three centimetres away.
The tissue itself. Buccal fat is not ordinary subcutaneous fat. It is a discrete encapsulated pad, densely cellular, and it does not have to be harvested from anywhere else on the body.
Free buccal fat pad grafting is an established technique rather than an experimental one: in a published series it corrected contour deformities with no significant resorption at three years and no donor-site complications.
Removed fat is processed on-table
The pad is delivered through a small incision inside the mouth — no external scar.
Then, on the table:
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Sharp dissection reduces the pad to microfat.
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Mechanical flocculation — passed repeatedly between two syringes through a connector, breaking the tissue to an injectable consistency without heat or chemicals.
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Placement into both malar eminences and the chin, in fine layers.
One sitting, through the mouth, nothing taken from anywhere else.
What holds the transplanted buccal fat in its place
Grafted fat is living tissue. Some of it takes and stays, the rest resorbs over the first three months. What remains holds the cheekbone and chin for about two years on its own.
After that it is maintained — and the maintenance is mostly your own tissue as well.
Platelet-rich plasma does the work. It is prepared from your own blood on the day, it supports the grafted fat, and used at planned intervals it holds the volume up.
Nothing synthetic, nothing bought in.
Filler is the second line, and deliberately the smaller one. When the cheekbone or chin volume starts to look low, a small amount corrects that specific drop. A top-up, not the treatment.
The order matters and so does the arithmetic. Patients kept on regular platelet-rich plasma need noticeably less filler.
Fillers are expensive, and buying facial volume by the syringe year after year is how maintenance turns into an open-ended bill. Doing it the other way round — autologous first, filler only where it is actually needed — is safer and it costs less.
On that protocol the projection has held for about five years, against about three for a graft with nothing done afterwards.
Why the Ageing Question Is the Right Question
The buccal fat pad shrinks on its own with age.
Everyone's does. Removing it accelerates a process already under way in that one place, and the result some people arrive with is a face that looked sculpted at thirty and gaunt at forty-five — hollow below the cheekbone, with the shadow that used to read as definition now reading as loss.
This is why the amount taken matters more.
The amount taken out matters more than the technique used to take it, and why the operation suits a forty-year-old better than a twenty-two-year-old.
Re-grafting the high-quality fat changes the arithmetic.
The volume does not leave the face; it moves up. How long it stays there is a fair question. The answer is a number — about two to three years for the graft on its own. It has lasted more than five years when it was maintained afterwards with simultaneous injections of platelet-derived growth factors and dermal fillers in small proportions. Those are the figures from an internal review of 55 patients treated here.
What the comparison table cannot show
Grafted fat does not all survive, and that is planned for.
A proportion resorbs in the first three months. The volume placed accounts for it, which is why the face looks fuller at two weeks than it will at six months. That is the design, not a complication.
Removal is the irreversible half.
Grafting can be repeated. This is the argument for taking a conservative amount, and against the aggressive removal currently popular online.
A filler trial before surgery is a reasonable thing to do.
It shows you whether more cheekbone projection actually suits your face before you commit to a permanent reduction below it. It costs you a few months and it has talked people out of surgery, which is a good outcome.
Who Buccal Fat Transplant Suits
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A full, round lower face with cheekbones that are present but obscured.
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A heavy or square jawline from masseter bulk rather than bone width.
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Someone at a stable weight, not mid-way through losing or gaining.
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Skin that will redrape over a smaller volume rather than hang.
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Someone who would rather their own tissue did the work, with synthetic filler kept to occasional top-ups.
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Someone describing the goal as shape rather than youth.
Who Buccal Fat Transplant Suits Doesn't Suit
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A naturally narrow or already thin face.
Removing buccal fat from a face that is not full produces permanent hollowing. This is the commonest reason to decline the operation and it is not negotiable by asking twice.
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Weight still changing.
Significant loss after removal compounds the hollowing. Wait until weight has been stable for six months.
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Age under about twenty-five.
The pad shrinks naturally with age. A face that is round at twenty may sharpen on its own by thirty, and fat removed at twenty cannot be recovered. This is a wait, not a refusal.
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Loose skin is the real problem.
Then this operation makes it worse. Come back after the conversation about a lift.
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The reference image came from a filter.
Not a moral judgement — the proportions in it are not achievable because they are not proportions.
Realistic Expectations
It sharpens proportion, not identity.
The face stays recognisably yours.
Some of the fat graft will resorb.
What remains holds for about two to three years on its own. A second subsequent fat grafting session may be necessary, harvesting your abdominal, thigh, or arm fat.
Bone sets the ceiling.
Grafted fat follows the shape underneath it.
The maintenance is real, and it is planned rather than sold.
Platelet-rich plasma at intervals, a small filler top-up only when the volume looks low. If you would rather do nothing afterwards, say so and expect the two-to-three year figure.
The result arrives over three months.
Results take longer to understand if procedures are combined. Swelling is substantial for the first fortnight and the graft is deliberately over-placed. Where several procedures are done in one sitting the swelling is heavier and takes noticeably longer to settle — that is the thing patients here are most often unprepared for.
Symmetry improves; matched symmetry is not the goal.
No face is symmetrical to begin with.
Buccal Fat Transplant: Stepwise Overview
Assessment & Photos
Where the roundness comes from is decided by examination — buccal fat, masseter, submental fat, skin laxity, or a combination. Photographs in standard views at a fixed distance. A face that looks round in a selfie and normal in a clinical photograph is a camera problem.
Planning reconstruction
Seven procedures can be performed - singly, or in combination. Elaborate planning determines which of the seven apply, and which do not. The plan identifies what will not change in your face, and what will.
Surgery
Buccal fat pads delivered through intraoral incisions. Processed on the table by sharp dissection and mechanical flocculation. Grafted to both malar eminences and the chin. Masseter injection, neck liposuction and dimple creation added in the same sitting where planned.
Recovery
Swelling peaks at 48–72 hours. Soft diet and oral rinses for the first week. Swelling expected to persist for at least 2 weeks.
Refinement
Reviewed at three months, when the graft has settled. Maintenance is planned from that review — not promised in advance and not started before the result is known.
Subsequent Procedures
The cheek volume reduced once after buccal fat removal, remains reduced forever. Dimples created once, persists. Fat graft may require repeat procedures later. Botox to the jaws need to be repeated every four to six months. Augmented molar eminence and chin may require maintenance with fillers and autologous growth factors, if necessary, later.
Anaesthesia
Buccal fat transplant is done under general anaesthesia as a one-day case. You come in, have the operation, and go home the same day. If you do not have people to support you at home, or have post-anaesthesia problems,
With neck liposuction — same anaesthetic, and depending on volume an overnight stay.
Botulinum toxin, platelet-rich plasma and filler top-ups — local anaesthetic only, in the clinic room, separate from the main operation.
A consultant anaesthetist reviews you before the day of surgery and is present throughout. This is at Apollo Multispeciality Hospital, which is JCI-accredited with intensive care and supportive systems on site.
Preparing for Buccal Fat Transplant
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Stop all nicotine four weeks before surgery — cigarettes, vapes, patches, gum, pouches. Longer is better. The skin over your cheeks and chin is already working with a reduced blood supply because of nicotine. Fat grafted into the face would retain less volume and produce sub-optimal results. If you cannot stop, say so and the operation is deferred rather than done at that risk.
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Stop two weeks before surgery: aspirin, ibuprofen and other anti-inflammatories, fish oil and omega-3, vitamin E, garlic, ginger, ginkgo, ginseng, turmeric and St John's wort. Paracetamol is fine for pain in the meantime.
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Tell us about everything you take, including anything sold as natural. Like, green tea, herbal remedies, etc. Several ordinary supplements thin the blood about as effectively as aspirin does, and they are the commonest reason an operation is postponed on the day.
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Arrange for someone to take you home.
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Plan around two weeks before you want to be seen socially.
Risks & Complications
Common
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Swelling for two to three weeks, asymmetric between the sides.
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Difficulty chewing and a soft-diet restriction for the first week.
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Temporary numbness inside the cheek.
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Contour irregularity or lumpiness in grafted areas, usually settling by three months.
Less common
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Partial graft resorption beyond what was planned, leaving less projection than intended.
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Asymmetry between the two sides in graft take, or in dimple position.
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Temporary chewing weakness after masseter injection.
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Asymmetric smile after masseter injection, where placement is inaccurate.
Uncommon
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Over-removal and late hollowing. The most important risk on this page. It presents years later, in a face that looked correct at six months, and there is no good correction for it.
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Injury to the buccal branch of the facial nerve — the reason dissection is done under direct vision rather than blindly.
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Salivary duct injury. The parotid duct runs close to the pad.
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Infection. The approach is through the mouth, which is not a sterile field. Oral rinses and antibiotic cover are routine.
In Our Series
No major complications occurred.
The consistent finding was swelling: where several procedures were combined in one sitting it was marked, and it took longer to settle than patients expected. That is not a complication, but it is the thing most likely to worry you at week three, and it is why the result is reviewed at three months rather than earlier.
Recovery & Swelling Timeline
If you are having four or five things done in one sitting, plan for more swelling and a longer settling period than a single procedure.
In our series that was the rule rather than the exception. It resolved in every case. It took longer than people wanted.
No External Scars
The incisions are inside the mouth and there is no external scar. They are closed with dissolving sutures and are not visible once healed. Where neck liposuction is included there are two or three punctures under the chin, a few millimetres each. These fine line small scars fade out over the next few months, but may or may not become entirely invisible.
Duration of Results
Two separate answers, because two separate things are happening.
The fat reduction is permanent. The anterior projection of the buccal fat pad is gone and it does not come back.
The prominence of malar eminences and chin is not permanent, and nobody's are. In the patients treated here, cheekbone and chin augmentation held for about two to three years from the grafted fat alone, and about five years where it was maintained afterwards with platelet-rich plasma and occasional structural filler top-ups in small amounts.
Published series of free buccal fat pad grafting report no significant resorption at three years,¹ so two years is a conservative figure rather than an optimistic one.
Botulinum toxin lasts four to six months.
Dimples are long-lasting, though they soften over the first year.
Anyone quoting you a permanent result from grafted fat is quoting you results that nobody can deliver.
Before You Book Buccal Fat Surgery Anywhere
Ask any surgeon you are considering, including this one.
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"What happens to the fat you remove?"
If the answer is that it is discarded, you are being offered a different and simpler operation. That may still be the right one for you — but you should know which one you are buying.
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"How much are you taking, and how do you decide?"
Over-removal is the mistake here that cannot be undone.
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"Is my roundness fat, muscle, or bone?"
A plan that does not distinguish these is treating whichever one the surgeon operates on.
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"How long will the cheekbone projection last, and what does holding it cost me each year?"
A surgeon who answers "it's permanent" is either not measuring or not telling you.
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"If I need maintenance, does it start with my own tissue or with filler?"
Filler-first is the expensive answer and it is worth knowing which one you are being offered.
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"What will this look like in ten years?"
A surgeon who has not thought about the hollowing has not thought about the operation.
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"Who gives the anaesthetic, and are they present throughout?"
Cost of Buccal Fat Transplant in Kolkata
Buccal fat transplant in Kolkata costs approximately between ₹90,000 to ₹2,00,000.
₹90,000 covers buccal fat surgery on its own, under general anaesthesia, as a one-day case. ₹2,00,000 covers the full set of procedures done together in a single sitting. Most people fall between the two, because most people need three or four of the seven.
Maintenance is separate, and it is deliberately kept cheap. Platelet-rich plasma is made from your own blood, so it costs a preparation charge rather than the price of a product. Filler is used only when the volume looks low, in small amounts. The reason for that order is partly clinical and partly financial: maintaining facial volume on filler alone is an expensive habit, and this way round you buy much less of it.
Removal alone costs less than removal with grafting. If your cheekbone projection is already good, the cheaper operation is the correct one and you should be quoted for it.
Your figure is confirmed by the hospital's billing department after examination.
Consultation fees, deposits, quotation validity, GST and what to ask before comparing any quotation are set out in full on the costs page.
What the quoted figure includes
Surgeon's fee · anaesthetist's fee · surgery and anaesthesia assistance · operating theatre and equipment · implants, grafts or scaffold · consumables and disposables · medicines during admission · hospital bed and stay · splint and dressings
What your quote does not include
Pre-operative investigations · medication after discharge · post-operative consultations · further revision surgery · applicable tax · travel and accommodation
Consultation fees, GST, applicable taxes, deposits, quotation validity, revision charges and what to ask before comparing any quotation: What a quotation includes, consultation fees, insurance and revisions
Dynamic Dimple Creation
A dimple is a small tether between the skin and the muscle underneath. Created surgically, it behaves in two phases.
Static first. For the early weeks it is visible at rest, whether or not you are smiling. Expected, and not the final result.
Dynamic afterwards. As the tether matures it settles into appearing on animation and vanishing at rest.
Dimples also do quiet contouring work — the tether pulls the lower cheek inward, reducing the fullness the rest of the operation is addressing.
Where they are placed
Position is decided by your anatomy, not by measurement from the midline. The dimple is sited where the cheek naturally creases on smiling and where the muscle attachment allows it, and those points are rarely identical on the two sides — almost no face is symmetrical to start with. A pair forced to match a face that does not match tends to read as constructed.
Some difference between the two sides in position and depth is therefore expected, and it is discussed and agreed before surgery rather than explained afterwards.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
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How long do I have to wait after my first surgery?
Photographs in This Page
Every photograph in this section is of an actual patient of Prof. Dr Srinjoy Saha, published with that patient's specific written consent for publication. Images are unretouched apart from standardised cropping and lighting, and are taken under consistent conditions before and after surgery. Any image illustrating a concept rather than a patient is that of a Model.
Surgical outcomes depend on individual anatomy, skin thickness, tissue quality and healing. Individual results vary. No image here is a promise or prediction of your result.
Consult Prof. Srinjoy Saha
Prof. Srinjoy Saha is the only Adjunct Professor of Plastic Surgery in Apollo AHERF among their 245 India-wide faculty list. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and the American College of Surgeons. He is a Harvard-trained surgeon-scientist and a Member of the Regenerative Medicine Committee of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
He is an experienced facial plastic surgeon who has seen enough complications to be careful, and enough good outcomes to be calm. He analyses every facial surgery case individually, and operates accordingly. He works to a regenerative-first protocol he calls the Jyoticision™ System.
YOUR NEXT STEPS
Assessment covers detailed facial analysis, skin thickness, buccal fat, neck fat in relation to facial proportions, and standardised photography.
Afterward, a discussion of what is achievable in your case and what is not, buccal fat removal and buccal fat transplant planning where relevant, review of medical history and medication, and the risks specific to you.
A personal consultation will clarify what is achievable for your anatomy and goals. Consultations are chargeable.