Question: What is liposuction?

Dr. Lawrence Shaw: Liposuction is a phenomenal procedure. It's been around since the 80s. It started as just large cannulas that were suctioning fat, moved into tumescent liposuction, which is adding fluid to the fat, but prior to liposuction the cannulas that became very small and the next advance after that, probably in the 90s, was ultrasonic liposuction where the cannulas themselves emitted an ultrasound that literally melted the fat as it was extracted.

Recently in the last couple of years, laser has entered the picture where we now have a SmartLipo or a laser lipolysis and a very tiny probe, smaller than an ink cartridge, is placed in a very small incision no larger than a needlestick and the laser itself emits energy that melts the fat.

Liposuction is the only technique that can change your genetic shape. All the dieting in the world, all the exercise in the world cannot change your genetic shape. An example I like to use is if you have a square sponge, you can't make a square sponge oval by taking the water out of it. You have to cut off the corners and oftentimes people will say, well will it come back? And my answer for that is, you can't make an oval sponge square even if you soak it in water. It never becomes square again. So the high points won't come back.

Oftentimes there's issues in the hip areas where someone doesn't have this fluent shape here, they have more of a hip bulge and a thigh bulge, very typical. It's called lipodystrophy and what liposuction will do is remove these areas. It's not for weight reduction. It's really for changing someone's shape that might have abnormal areas of the hips, the thighs, the buttock areas, the inner thighs, the arms, the neck, even the inner knees can be performed, as well as the abdomen in an abdomen that doesn't have any laxity.