A Florida cosmetic surgeon is offering liposuction patients a facility in which they can store some of their removed fat in case they want to make use of it in future filler procedures.
Dr Jeffrey Hartog has called his Seminole County centre the Liquid Gold lipid bank, where patients will be able to store their fat in a super deep freeze. Dr Hartog said storing fat will allow patients who want to undergo filler operations later on to avoid having to have more fat removed when it comes to the procedure.
"I will present it as an option to any patient having liposuction," he said, explaining that the patient would not have to go under multiple anaesthetics before subsequent filler operations.
He added, "We put the patient to sleep once. Do the lipo. Get the fat out once and have as much as we need for later injections."
The harvested fat would be drained and cleaned, before having protectants added to it and put into a slow freeze that sees the fat's temperature gradually taken to minus 192C. The storage won't come cheaply, however: storage of 250 cubic centimetres of fat – about a coffee cup's worth – will cost $900 for the first year and $200 a year after that.
Some other doctors have raised their eyebrows over the storage, stating that medical science has not yet made any conclusions on the viability of fat stored in such a way. Dr Stephen Baker, an associate professor of plastic surgery at Georgetown University, said, "No good data exists to substantiate the fact that frozen fat does well or is metabolically viable."
He added that the amount of fat needed for most common filler procedures – generally between 30 and 50 cubic centimeters – is so small that it hardly makes the cost worth it.
(Image: The Bougainvillea Clinique)
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