Since 1893, 1 autologous fat transplantation has been used for various applications in surgery. 2 It was initially used as filler material for simple soft-tissue augmentation, but the capacity of transplanted fat to provide long-term tissue repair and regeneration has recently emerged. 3 The extraordinary plasticity of fat is attributable to the presence of adipose-derived stromal cells endowed with an immunophenotypical profile and multilineage plasticity analogous to those of bone marrow–derived mesenchymal stem cells. 4 Centrifugation entered clinical practice as an empirically accepted step of pretransplantation fat treatment 5 that will preserve the viability and self-renewing capacity of adipose-derived stromal cells, but the rationale for this procedure has not yet been investigated. Here, we comparatively quantified the viability and self-renewal of adipose-derived stromal cells from human fat samples centrifuged at 3000, 6000, or 10,000 rpm, corresponding to 1126, 12,519, and 4507 g, respectively.

Centrifugation at 3000, 6000, or 10,000 rpm for 3 minutes reduced the volume of harvested fat to 51.55±6.95 percent, 44.58±5.05 percent, or 40.46±7.99 percent of its initial volume, respectively. The difference in volume reduction between 3000-and 10,000-rpm protocols proved to be statistically significant (n= 7)(p= 0.01).