Adonis Aesthetics In The News
Water assisted liposuction: The latest wave of body contouring
by J.M. POMPIA, BTF, August 14, 2009
It’s one of the most
common complaints regarding
a person’s body:
inability to lose fat around
the stomach, hips or lower
back, no matter how many
calories are cut and
burned.
“We all know that a
great body does not come
easily,” said Dr. Rina
Shinn, director of Adonis
Aesthetics. “It does require
a diet and exercise with
vigilance. The problem is
that even with diet and exercise,
there are pockets of
fat that simply don’t seem
to budge.
“Or, more likely, there are parts of our body that irk us whenever we look at them. But we know we are not going to add a Spartan schedule of exercise and a new diet plan to our already stressed and busy lives.”
For the past 20 to 30 years, the answer to this bodily dilemma has been liposuction. Initially, liposuction was carried out in an operating room under general anesthesia. A large steel tubing called cannula (about a half inch in diameter) was shoved into a fatty area repeatedly to suck out fat, and often times, blood and some torn tissues such as supporting fibers and nerves.
No local anesthesia was used, so this was called a dry method liposuction. Downtime was often lengthy and pain was common.
In 1985, a technique of tumescent anesthesia for liposuction was introduced. This involved an infusion of a dilute anesthetic solution into the fatty area, letting it diffuse for some time to achieve numbing.
Then, the fatty tissue swollen by the solution was suctioned out.
This method soon became a gold standard for all liposuction.
LAL (Laser assisted liposuction) became a new trend when SmartLipo was introduced three years ago. A slew of laser liposuction machines followed. In LAL, an extremely thin fiber (usually 1 mm) is introduced into the fatty area after tumescent anesthesia is given. The fatty tissues are burned by laser.
Then, the emulsified fatty fluid is sometimes suctioned out and sometimes left behind.
There also is an ultrasound assisted liposuction (UAL), the most popular one being Vaser liposuction. In this setting, fat is melted by ultrasound energy.
In the latter part of 2008, a new method of liposuction was introduced. Body Jet liposuction, used in Europe since 2004 with great success, was cleared for U.S. use by the FDA.
Body Jet liposuction is also called water assisted liposuction (WAL).
The distinguishing feature of this method is a fan-shaped water jet that sprays a numbing solution to the fatty tissue area to achieve a much faster local anesthesia. It requires only 20 to 30 percent of the traditional tumescent fluid volume to achieve numbing, and there is no waiting for a numbing effect to occur.
As soon as the intended fatty areas are sprayed with numbing solution, the suction begins.
Instead of just suctioning out the swollen fats, Body Jet allows the knocking off of fat cells from surrounding support tissues by spraying them down. The suction holes located slightly behind the tip of the cannula gently draw out the loosened fat cells.
Gone are the rapid jabbing motions of the previous liposuction methods. The slow deliberate movements mean far less trauma to the surrounding tissues.
This translates into a great reduction in irregular, uneven skin surfaces, bruising, and persistent numbness — common side effects of previous liposuction methods.
Body Jet or water assisted liposuction is performed in a physician’s office under local anesthesia alone. Sometimes a mild oral sedation may be given for better patient comfort and less anxiety. The patients are wide awake during the procedure and participate in positioning themselves.
There is far less fluid left behind the tissue, so post-operative tissue retention is minimal. There is no guess work and more exact sculpting is now possible.
Results that used to take one to two months to show up are now visible one week after the procedure.
The recovery time also is remarkably shorter than the previous methods. Most people resume their daily activities on the day of procedure or the next day.
People may experience varying degrees of soreness, but most find it bearable to the point that prescription pain medication is not needed.
Body Jet is a revolutionary in its precision, gentleness, and superb results in body sculpting and should become the gold standard of liposuction.
The caveat is, however, that it is a body contouring method and not a weight loss modality.
