Liposuction in Dubai soars during school holidays

The number of liposuction procedures performed in Dubai on children peaks in the summertime, with some children having treatments to avoid being bullied because of their look.

“We generally see more children throughout the summertime because that is when they’re off school,” one liposuction specialist commented.

One liposuction clinic in Dubai has performed liposuction on boys as young as 14. “We are seeing an increase obesity in children because their parents allow them to have fast food,” said the clinic’s owner, Dr Max Sawaf.

“Not only do they get fat, but the oestrogens from the fat can make boys develop breasts (a condition also known as gynecomastia).”

Overweight children, and boys in particular begin shying away from participating in athletics and from wearing tight fitting cloths, such as t-shirts. “While we would prefer them to slim down naturally, it is very difficult once they grow those boobs. Liposuction is more prevalent than you would believe.”

Counsellors have raised concerns over potential emotional difficulties. “It teaches children or reinforces their belief that there is some thing wrong with them. It validates the bullies and teaches them that others can dictate how they feel about themselves.”

“It also gives youngsters the message that parents do not have enough time to help them develop self-confidence and a good self image, or to learn how to protect themselves and be emotionally stable,” a doctor said.

Liposuction fat cells used for stem cell treatment

Scientists have found that human fat extracted through liposuction comprises more stem cells than any other tissue within your body.

And not just any average stem cells. These cells actually should have the capacity to develop kidney — any portion of your own body — because it is embryonic.

Those stem cells in fat extracted through liposuction can now be kept for future use.

Most adult stem cells have the capability to revive themselves, but cannot become any cell type. They’re also prone to dying after transplantation. One variety, however, called multilineage distinguishing anxiety enduring cells, or muse cells for brief, appears to prevent these difficulties. Isolated from skin tissue and bone marrow, they had the ability to self – renew and differentiate into all types of cells and helped to mend damaged tissue in animal tests. Promisingly, they didn’t form tumours.

The problem is the fact that muse cells have hitherto proved tricky to get and use. Until, that is, scientists realised that fat (or “adipose”) tissue extracted during stomach liposuction is a copious supply of them.

Tests were conducted to differentiate them into bone, muscle, fat, heart, brain and liver cells. Encouragingly, they also revealed patterns of gene expression indicating they were unlikely to form tumors. Dr Chazenbalk has yet to transplant these cells into creatures, although the cells’ ability to boom under pressure makes them a great candidate.

Physicians extract the fat in an hour-long liposuction procedure done under local anesthesia. Individuals do not even must go through a complete liposuction procedure to really get the number of fat needed to stem cells. A small number will do.

It’s really a small amount of fat – 20 CC’s – which essentially is less than a shot glass. The fat is subsequently delivered to a stem cell called Adicyte.

It costs about $ 2, 000 to prepare and express the stem cells for bank. After that, it is $120 a year to keep the stem cells.

Surgeons advocate tighter control of liposuction in Connecticut

Connecticut plastic surgeons are meeting at the state Capitol complex in Hartford to advocate passage of the bill addressing security at medical spas.

They are holding a Tuesday news conference to emphasize the importance of patient safety requirements at medical spas, that offer a variety of surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic services including liposuction and Botox injections.

A bill before the General Assembly would give the public health commissioner regulatory supervision for these services and demand a state-accredited physician be employed to manage operations.

Everyone who violates the new regulations would need to pay a fine of up to $500 each day.

State Legislators consider tightening rules for Liposuction in New Jersey

New Jersey lawmakers are mulling a proposition that would limit the operation of liposuction procedures in New Jersey to ASCs, hospitals and accredited office based facilities.

While cosmetic surgeons say the legislation is needed to guard patient safety, dermatologists working outside of non-accredited offices accuse the surgeons of trying to protect their business and create a restricted market.

For many years, dermatologists have been offering laser liposuction in New Jersey from office practices, based on a recent report. Plastic surgeons support the planned limitations due to concerns that more cosmetic cases will migrate from licensed facilities, where certification and their more extensive training ensure a higher level of patient safety.

The dermatologists answer that NJ’s current regulations are sufficient to safeguard patients, particularly since the office based practices just use local anesthesia, not the higher risk general anesthetic alternative. Plus, they notice, their prices to patients are even lower than ASCs’.

The Health and Senior Services Committee of New Jersey’s general assembly published its most recent version of the bill at the end of last year. The state senate’s Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee issued an accompanyin bill last week.

Liposuction still thriving in Greece, despite economic woes

More people are having cosmetic surgery in disaster wracked Greece than in almost any other nation on the planet. The rationale? It might come down to just wanting to look and feel better in the face of financial difficulty.

Based on Germany’s DerSpegel newspaper, in 2011, 142,394 aesthetic procedures were done in the nation of 11 million individuals. That is to say one in 79 Greeks had Botox injections or other procedures such as liposuction.

Worldwide, the Greeks ranked second only to south Koreans with regard to the amount of procedures done per capita.

Athanasios Athanaisiou, who opened his flourishing practice Athens Beverly Hills Medical Team at the peak of Greece’s economic crises in 2011, said ‘I think that if people aren’t doing well, it’s particularly important to hear others say: “Wow, you look terrific”.

‘I constantly saw the financial crisis as an opportunity.’

“Maybe they are getting less cash, but they are operating. We adjust ourselves to the marketplace.”

However there can also be another reason why so many Greeks are opting for cosmetic surgery – falling prices and more competition.

Yet here’s the thing, the fall in the price of particular processes might be more of a consequence of a fall in healthcare expense as a whole in Greece, which has found the authorities there slashing its funding by a third in three years. Whereas the Greek authorities spent 12 billion pounds (18 billion USD) on healthcare last year, in 2012 it just spent 8 billion (12.4 billion USD).

However there might become a real valid reason why so many Greeks are pursuing plastic surgery. As economic opportunities have dwindled many women are now once again being forced into improving their appearances as this for many has become their sole currency in getting ahead in a competitive jobs market.

Interestingly Greece is only one example of a nation where in fact the liposuction business flourishes in times of economic crisis. In America, also, lots of individuals have had cosmetic procedures despite the poor economy. Following the 2008 downturn, Americans spent less on rent, food and clothes, but more on liposuction, breast augmentations and gluteoplasty. This might justbe another way of saying that in times of economic woe it just may help to finally get round to that beauty treatment that may help you feel better about yourself, boosting your self esteem, confidence and success in the corporate jungle.

Liposuction in Maryland set for tighter regulation

Maryland is moving to strengthen laws on the fast-growing medspa industry — a shift developed to narrow a “loophole” and stop fatalities including one last year following a liposuction treatment at a Timonium, Md facility.

Laws being discussed by state officials might bar plastic surgeons from performing liposuction and other procedures in medspas and health-related offices unless the services are inspected by the authorities or third – party accrediting bodies, Maryland Secretary of Health Joshua Sharfstein stated.

Greater scrutiny would be brought by the changes to an industry where liposuction clients generally pay out of pocket for procedures – – – making the customer the primary oversight authority, instead of private or government insurers who demand safeguards, Sharfstein said.

“The objective would be to be sure the riskier procedures are happening in the safer places,” he said.

Maryland is among a growing number of states wanting to regulate where liposuction and other procedures can be performed. Twenty-seven states have passed regulations or added guidelines regarding where liposuction operations can take place, based on the American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities

A law was passed by Florida, for example, last year requiring yearly review of any center that eliminates more than 1000 cubic centimeters of fat during liposuction. In New York, certification is required for any office-based surgery that eliminates more than 500 cubic centimeters of fat during liposuction or uses anything more than minimal anesthesia.

“A lot of states are working out these problems with medspas,” said Dr. Doug Forman, a cosmetic surgeon in North Bethesda who serves on the American Society of Plastic Surgeons’ government affairs board. “Nationally, medspas are slipping in to this grey area.”

There are almost 5, 000 now listed using the International Medical Spa Association, while there were about 800 medspas across the US five years ago, said director Allan Share.

But there is no classification for what qualifies as a medspa, and they include facilities that offer a variety of solutions from Botox to complex surgeries, Share said. The industry continues to grow as centres seek to benefit from the demand from demand from cash paying customers, he said.

“Minimally invasive” processes such as laser skin treatments and Botox injections have increased by 6 percent since 2000, according to the plastic surgeons society. Surgical procedures, meanwhile, have dropped 16 per cent on the same period. Health authorities encourage individuals to verify that licensed physicians are conducting their cosmetic surgery procedures and that the procedures are taking place in certified facilities that are either equipped to manage problems or have associations with neighborhood hospitals.

Physicians and other health care workers have been charged with a range of infractions in the past few years, occasionally with serious results, Md Board of Physicians records show. Maryland lawmakers were pressed into motion a year ago after a Lochearn woman died of an illness developed during liposuction at Monarch Medspa in Timonium.

But similar risks are shown by earlier cases. A doctor at another Timonium plastic surgery center lost his medical licence in 2011 after two of his patients died of complications associated with complex aesthetic surgeries. Officials reprimanded that doctor for executing procedures in improper settings.

Others have been disciplined for offering services including laser hair removal without a medical licence at all. Their state Dept of Health and Mental Hygiene elevated plastic surgery regulation to a best legislative priority in the days after regulators close down Monarch Medspa in Sept over “likely deviations from common infection control methods.” Three aggressive infections were contracted by patients after undergoing liposuction; one of them, 59 – year – old Eula Witherspoon, died less than a week after the process. Monarch officials had pledged to assist authorities and extended their sympathies when the infections came to light. They could not be reached for further comment.

At the time, Sharfstein noted “an unevenness” in regulation over liposuction and additional aesthetic procedures.

The 2013 Basic Assemblage approved a bill permitting the health department to create laws that tackle the loophole. Health authorities anticipate Gov. Martin O’Malley to sign the bill next month, though Raquel Guillory, a spokeswoman for the governor, stated it is not clear when that will be.

Regulators intend to begin by seeking community input on processes which should be protected by the requirements, Sharfstein said. That can include liposuction and other surgical procedures that require anesthesia, he said.

Cosmetic surgeons who run out of workplaces which are currently accredited welcomed the new regulations as a godsend to patient security. For example, Dr. Adam Summers of the Maryland Cosmetic Surgery Center in Glen Burnie mentioned that service would not be affected by the regulations because, even though the center bills itself as a “medical spa,” it is already certified by the state as an ambulatory surgical center.

Health officials and plastic surgeons informed that any aesthetic procedure involving a scalpel or a laser involves danger, though. Board of Doctors records show a variety of disciplinary steps in recent years involving plastic surgeons and aesthetic procedures.

Study shows that Liposuction doesn’t negate health risks of obesity

Obesity is related to most of the risk factors for diabetes and coronary heart disease. And losing weight can improve the results of tests for these risk factors (blood sugar, blood pressure, and etc). So one might anticipate that removing body fat by liposuction would also help in this respect. This possibility has been examined by a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. The objective of the research was to quantify the consequences of liposuction on the metabolic risk factors for coronary heart disease in overweight females. Here’s a summation of the results.

Fifteen women with abdominal obesity (waist size more than 39 ins, or 100 cm) were enrolled in the research. Their typical body mass index (BMI) was 37.7. Ten of them had normal sugar threshold (i.e. they were not diabetic) and 7 of them had type II diabetes, treated with oral medication.

Before their surgery, each subject had a test to demonstrate the effectiveness of insulin on the blood glucose levels in their liver, muscle, and fatty cells after intravenous glucose administration followed by an infusion of insulin; it was a measure of insulin sensitivity, which can be reduced in diabetes.

Other assessments measured markers of chronic inflammation in the blood (C-reactive protein or CRP, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor), blood fats, and blood pressure.

Each week thereafter, the women had ‘large-volume’ liposuction (removal of over 4 liters of fluid, which is 60% fat); in fact, on average, 16-17 liters were removed. Five to 12 months after the tests the operations were repeated.

The non-diabetics had their body fat decreased by 18%, and the diabetic by 19%, 10 weeks after liposuction. Average BMI levels was reduced by 2.3 points in non-diabetics and by 3.9 points in diabetics.

What was notable was that liposuction had no substantial effect on insulin sensitivity of the liver, muscle, or fat tissue; it didn’t modify the inflammatory blood markers predictive of coronary artery disease; and other cardiac risk factors — blood pressure, blood sugar, blood lipids — were also unaffected.

Clearly, abdominal liposuction had no significant beneficial effects on the problems often categorized as the metabolic symptoms, and which are associated with an increased risk of coronary and diabetes heart disease. Why was this so? An associated editorial in exactly the same medical journal tries to offer a reason.

Dr Kelley points out that losing weight by dieting and exercise does enhance metabolic and cardiovascular risk factors. So what is the distinction when losing weight by liposuction? It appears that these outcomes are produced by the ‘negative energy balance’ activated by eating fewer calories and burning more calories in exercise. A negative balance isn’t generated by liposuction in this sense.

The article points out that before writing off liposuction as a sort of therapy for obesity, we should remember that it can help considerably with people’s appearance, and reducing weight quickly in this manner can reduce the chance of heart failure and improve knee arthritis. Nonetheless, liposuction is not the panacea that some had hoped, for health improvement. The article instead recommends following a suitable calorie-controlled diet combined with lots of exercise.

Regular exercise after liposuction shown to keep fat off

A new study by researchers from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil suggests that liposuction patients can succeed in keeping slim by taking regular exercise and eating a balanced diet, after the procedure.

The study was designed to test the hypothesis that patients could be susceptible to regaining fat after liposuction, and that any fat gained by patients after liposuction could increase their chance of developing cardiometabolic health problems. The team from Brazil set out to test this view, with their own hypothesis that if patients took regular exercise and ate sensibly after a liposuction procedure, they could succeed in keeping the fat off, months after the liposuction procedure.

The team took a sample of 36 women with normal weights and divided them into two groups – one group who would take regular exercise and eat healthily after the liposuction operation, and another group who would make no change to their lifestyle, in terms of exercise or diet. Both groups then underwent a minor liposuction procedure to remove a small amount of abdominal fat.

After the liposuction procedure, the researchers measured the success of both groups in keeping off the fat, two months after the liposuction and six months after the liposuction. The researchers concluded that patients can succeed in keeping off both the abdominal fat and visceral fat, through following a healthy lifestyle that combines regular exercise and a calorie controlled diet.

In essence, the study reinforces the message from surgeons, that liposuction is a sensible long term solution, when combined with a healthy post liposuction lifestyle that combines regular exercise and healthy eating. Undergoing liposuction without a change in lifestyle is not a wise choice, and may lead to the sub cutaneous fat removed being replaced by visceral fat, the more dangerous fat that can surround internal organs, increasing the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

France considers introduction of liposuction tax

France, with a newly elected Socialist President, and under pressure to address its huge budget deficit, is considering the introduction of a tax on liposuction and other cosmetic surgery procedures.

Up until now, there has been no TVA, or Sales Tax on medical procedures. However, the new French government, under Francois Hollande, is considering changing the tax code that has, until now, helped Parisians shed their excess pounds the easy way. Already the French tax authorities have issued a finding that operations for aesthetic, rather than medical reasons, should be subject to the country’s 19.6 per cent sales tax. If liposuction is deemed to be purely aesthetic, as is likely, the average price of liposuction in France will increase by as much as $2,500.

The French President has promised to tax the rich, and the inclusion of liposuction on the tax hit list might play well to his supporters.

The cost of liposuction and options for paying for liposuction

How much does Liposuction cost?

The cost of your liposuction procedure will generally be determined by three factors: the area of the body to be treated, the anesthesiologist’s services, and the cost of the surgical facility where the procedure will be conducted.

Our handy guide will give you a rough idea of the costs involved.

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