Dr. Sanjay Gupta: New procedures promise to melt fat
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CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta
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CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes a look at methods that purport to remove fat without lipsuction surgery. (September 3)
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(CNN) -- How can you get rid of fat without a special diet or exercise, surgery or even liposuction? New techniques gaining in popularity are promising to melt and burn away those fat cells.
CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta talked about some of the procedures and their effectiveness with CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien.
O'BRIEN: Tell us a little bit about some of the latest cosmetic procedures.
GUPTA: You've heard of Doctors Without Borders. These are surgeons without scalpels. Cellulite and fat is a big business, no pun intended. There're creams, medications, all sorts of different devices to get rid of the fat.
The mainstay for a long time has been something called liposuction. ... This is an increasingly popular procedure. About 372,000 of those procedures (were) done last year, up over 100 percent from five years ago. Incidentally, about 56,000 of those were done in men, so it's a popular procedure for men as well. The procedure costs about $2,500 and usually takes about six weeks to recover from this. So that's a long time -- two to three weeks for just the bruising alone. And oftentimes it's not a permanent solution.
So, it's got all sorts of people thinking about different possibilities ... nonsurgical options as well. I want to tell you about a couple of them.
First of all is something called mesotherapy. It's been around in France since 1952. It costs about $6,000, so it's a lot more expensive even than liposuction (and it) usually takes about 8 to 10 sessions. They actually inject a chemical in the skin layer and this chemical of medications over time will -- actually it's supposed to any way -- burn away some of the fat underneath the skin layer. It actually dissolves some of that fat.
Exactly how well that works or even if it works at all is a subject of great controversy. There have been no clinical trials showing really one way or the other here in the United States.
Another procedure, endermologie, is something gaining a little bit of popularity. This looks a little bit like a vacuum cleaner or handheld sander and really, works sort of the same way. You actually sort of vacuum. It's right on the skin. There's no needles, no invasiveness. What it does, basically, again, is try and burn some of the fat underneath.
Neither one of those techniques -- and I'll tell you this up front because a lot of people are interested in this -- none of them have scientific trials behind them.
Another technique (uses) ultrasound, just the basic ultrasound that everyone has heard of. That is gaining a little bit more popularity. This has been around in Israel now for some time. We talked to a lot of plastic surgeons about using ultrasound, (using) high frequency sound waves just on the abdomen, on the neck.
This was the procedure that most of the plastic surgeons we talked to said has the most promise. No clinical trials on that as well. But look out for that one, ultrasound, to try and burn away some of the fat.
