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Posts Tagged ‘cryosurgery’

Can We Freeze Fat? - Notes from a San Francisco Bay Area Dermatologist

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

If you have ever seen a dermatologist for a wart or for precancerous lesions, your treatment may have included a spray of liquid nitrogen that  “freezes” the skin.  This method is known as cryosurgery, which cools skin tissue to an extreme temperature, destroying cells.

There is now preliminary evidence that this same concept may be applied to underlying adipose or fatty tissue, which would compete with fat removal techniques like liposuction.  As reported in Dermatology Times, the group at Harvard Medical School in Boston published a paper on a method to remove excess fat called selective cryolysis.  Through intact skin of pigs, they used a cold element at varying degrees to affect the underlying fatty tissue.  Assessments performed immediately afterward and at increments up to three months, showed an obvious loss of subcutaneous fat.  Inflammation was reported for up to four weeks after the treatment, but no signs of injury to the overlying skin, pigment changes, scarring or textural changes were noted.

While this study has yet to be applied to humans, it does introduce a unique concept for safe fat dissolution.  I look forward to further research and results as this method continues to be explored.

 

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