Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas Liposuction Surgery
If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice there’s a new liposuction technique or a technique promising to replace liposuction every six months or so. Each of these techniques gets spliced into the nightly newscasts and featured on morning talk shows desperate for a story to follow up their favorite tag line: “New Method for Fat Loss – coming up after these commercials,” which commercials probably feature numerous fat-filled fast foods or expensive diet alternatives. The goal of these techniques, like the TV tag line, is to make money by promising something no one can deliver: body contouring magic.
Marketing Incentive
In casual conversation, we often talk about liposuction as if it’s magic. Just remove the fat from anywhere we want instantly. But liposuction is not magic, and if you start considering it you realize that while liposuction can achieve great results, it has a number of drawbacks.
Liposuction costs money. Liposuction requires time off from work. Liposuction recovery can take months to reveal final results. Liposuction has risks. People choose liposuction because its proven results outweigh its drawbacks.
It doesn’t take a marketing genius to figure out that if you promise the great results of liposuction without any of the drawbacks, you can make a lot of money in the amount of time it takes for someone to point out that the emperor has no clothes. A number of people have. And more will.
Typically, these new technologies are marketed to doctors on the basis of making money. If you look at the advertising copy for them, they include phrases such as “client throughput” and “the opportunities available for the body shaping market are significant.”
The “Dirty Little Secret” of New Technologies
Medical technologies like new liposuction alternatives need to be approved or cleared by the FDA before they can be marketed. Most of the new liposuction fad technologies entering the market do so through what is called a 510(k) clearance. A 510(k) clearance allows a company to market a device on the basis of “substantial equivalence” to an already-marketed device, known as the “predicate.”
According to the FDA, substantial equivalence means that the new device:
- has the same intended use as the predicate; and
- has the same technological characteristics as the predicate;
or - has the same intended use as the predicate; and
- has different technological characteristics and the information submitted to FDA;
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- does not raise new questions of safety and effectiveness; and
- Demonstrates that the device is at least as safe and effective as the legally marketed device.
For most “liposuction fad” technologies, the predicate technology includes traditional liposuction technology. If the FDA clears the technology under a 510(k) permit, it is essentially saying that it doesn’t see any reason why the procedure shouldn’t be the same as traditional liposuction. Additional studies may be done to prove additional claims, but until that happens you are being sold on a technology that is known to be the same as its predicate.
Proven Safe and Effective
The reason why so many marketing people target liposuction is because the technology and technique are proven safe and effective. Plastic surgeons in general are knowledge-seekers and perfectionists. They are eager to try out new technologies, and if they feel the technology will help them to give better results, they will adopt it. Yet a recent survey by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery showed that over half of the surgeons surveyed still preferred traditional liposuction. About a fifth preferred ultrasonic liposuction. Less than 4% preferred laser-assisted liposuction.
Just a Tool
The essential thing to remember about liposuction is that it is just a tool and depends on the skill of the surgeon to properly wield it to get good results.
Plastic surgeon in Dallas, Dr. Vasdev Rai has been performing liposuction procedures since 1983 with good results and low rates of complications. He has evaluated a number of “liposuction fads,” but continues to use technologies that he knows give great results for his patients. In most cases, he uses tumescent liposuction, with ultrasonic liposuction being preferred for some treatment areas.
To learn more about your liposuction options, please schedule a lipo consultation with board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Vasdev Rai at the Cosmetic Surgical Center.
