Based on our studies, there are many cases in which patients with cleft lip age, and the thickness of their vermillion and height of their philtrum ridge decrease after the primary surgery because a cleft lip is accompanied by a soft tissue defect. These defects must be fixed through secondary revision surgery. This surgery consists of a local flap and tissue transplantation surgery. At our hospital, we performed dermal fat grafting for the defects and costal cartilage grafting for simultaneous rhinoplasty on 5 of 24 patients. The dermal fat grafting produced good visible results even though the technique that we used was simple. In conclusion, this technique is effective for fixing relatively small defects.
