TEL AVIV Tel (dpa) – An Israeli physicist and plastic surgeon have invented a treatment to get rid of fat on the hips, thighs or underbelly which they say is safer and less invasive than conventional lyposuction.
The treatment uses soundwaves to bombard fat cells and destroy them. The destroyed cells are then removed by the body itself over a period of two weeks following the treatment.Yoram Eshel and Ami Glicksman say the ultrasound device they designed uses a frequency lower than that of conventional ultrasound employed in hospitals, but still too high for a human – or even a bat’s – ear to hear.They say they have already conducted several successful treatments on pigs, and expect to be able to carry out their first treatments on humans in Poland within four months, pending a permit.Each person is born with a constant amount of fat cells, explains Glicksman, a plastic surgeon at the Sheba Medical Centre outside Tel Aviv.Weight gain causes those cells to expand while losing weight makes them shrink. Only in extreme cases of obesity does the body actually produce new fat cells.The problem for many women, and men, is that their bodies are genetically programmed to store fat locally – for women often in the thighs, while men often pile up fat around the stomach.Exercise gives them no control over where to lose weight, so that some women become too skinny in the rest of their bodies before their bodies start burning the emergency fat supplies in their hips.According to Glicksman, his ultrasound treatment can permanently rid people of their tendency for local weight gain.“Even if a patient gains weight again, the deformation won’t come back … because if before treatment she had 10 million fat cells (in her hips), afterwards she has only five million fat cells that can gain weight,” he says.With no need for a general anaesthetic, patients can go home after a one-hour session, leaving the rest of the work up to their immune and lymph systems, which will gradually drain up to 0.5 litres of destroyed fat tissue from the body.Treatment can then be repeated as many times as necessary at intervals of one month.“The moment the body recognizes destroyed cells, it sends white blood cells to remove them,” explains Glicksman. “The body can deal with certain amounts (of destroyed cells). We found that 500 cubic centimetres is not a problem.”Normal liposuction can remove up to 2.5 litres of fat per session, but it involves making an incision in the skin and inserting a tube, which has to be moved around under the skin to get to all the fat.“It is virtually impossible not to damage blood vessels and nerves when you have to poke around with a tube for about an hour to soak up the fat,” Glicksman says.The result is temporary haemorrhages, swelling and loss of sensation in the skin which take several months to heal, he adds.The risk of complications, such as infections, is around 1 per cent, he says, adding there is even a risk of death if the suction tube unintentionally enters the liver, spleen or intestine.“Several months ago we had the first death caused by liposuction in Israel,” says Eshel, who says that the risk, while small, is still high for a procedure which is only cosmetic and not life-saving.According to Eshel, his ultrasound only destroys fat cells. It leaves other cells intact because of their different structure.“Arteries or muscle, for example, are very elastic. Fat is very delicate. It gets a blow and it simply explodes,” he says.“We did not invent the fact that ultrasound works selectively. That has already been known for 50 years,” adds Eshel, explaining that brain surgeons use the technique to cut through brain without hurting other tissue.But he says they are the first to succeed in using ultra-sound to destroy fat.“Usually, the more effective (a treatment) is, the more risks there are,” says Amiram Borenstein, a plastic surgeon in Tel Aviv who specializes in liposuction, adding those risks will have to be checked.“There have been reports that ultrasound causes the creation of free radicals, and it has to be proved that it does not cause cancer,” says Borenstein.But, he adds, “the idea itself is a very good one.”
