Others question whether it is the surgery alone that is leading to better health.
"Is removing fat surgically just as good for your health as via diet and exercise?" said Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis. "That's an open question that's not answered in this study."
Those last claims were based on a relatively small study, focused on one-year follow-ups of 14 women who had liposuction of their abdomens, flanks, backs and inner and outer thighs at Georgetown University Medical Center.
"These were basically healthy women who were 30 to 50 pounds overweight, with a body mass index from 25 to 29.9, below the medical cutoff for obesity," said Dr. Sharon Y. Giese, senior author of the study.
Research suggests that the metabolic benefits of weight loss come from losing fat throughout the body, including areas like the tissues of the heart, pancreas and liver. Removing localized fat deposits may or may not be as beneficial.
Dr. Gerald H. Pitman, a plastic surgeon in New York and the author of one of the most widely read textbooks on liposuction, said: "I always say that the three most dangerous words in plastic surgery are `it's only liposuction.' In well-trained hands on a carefully selected patient, lipoplasty is safe surgery. But the bottom line is it's still surgery."
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