Background: There have been several reports of patients experiencing cerebral embolisms following the injection of autologous fat into the face during cosmetic surgery. These embolisms likely resulted from unintentional introduction of fat particles into facial arteries, which then reached the cerebral arteries by retrograde motion.
Case presentation: We describe here a patient who developed an internal carotid artery (ICA) embolism after autologous fat injection for temporal augmentation. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a pathologically proven ICA embolism after fat injection into the face.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that the fat particles reached the cerebral arteries via a previously unknown pathway.
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Keywords: Cerebral infarction; Fat embolism; Fat injection; Temporal augmentation.