One of the many fat dissolving procedures that has grown in popularity and recognition over the past few years is one that originated in Europe called mesotherapy. Not only has it’s effectiveness been called into question many times, and some patients complained that it did not work at all on them, but now French researchers are questioning it’s safety and citing several instances of infections that result from the treatment that can get pretty serious.
The mesotherapy treatment consists of several stages of injections of a fluid directly into the fatty deposits that patients want to get rid of. They claim that this “all natural concoction”, which still remains unclear as to what exactly it contains, breaks up and destroys fat cells. The whole premise is that the fat cells, after they have been destroyed, are basically absorbed by or expelled by the body through natural waste elimination efforts. The areas that are treated may become noticeably smaller within either weeks or months, depending on the patient.
However, some patients end up with almost disfiguring areas of oozing and bacterial infection in the areas where they were injected, and that has caused some concern over the safety of this increasingly popular procedure that has been performed for years in Europe by practitioners. Some of the patients identified as having serious infections actually had to be opened up to drain absesses that developed because of the infections, while other were successfully treated nonsurgically.
Most of the cases identified as serious were from a specific clinic where patients were given several rounds of mesotherapy, which is now closed, so it is unclear whether this procedure is just plain dangerous no matter who performs it, or whether this one particular clinic had exceptionally high rates of infection in their patients.
Mesotherapy is still a popular option because it is often cheaper than other methods of fat removal like liposuction and Smartlipo, both of which usually use suction to get the fat out, with the latter using lasers to melt the fat first. Other methods of cellulite removal and fat removal have gained popularity amongst women who often struggle more with cellulite and fat deposits because of hormones.
