Transcript of the Discussion
Randy: You do a lot of liposuction.
Dr. Chasan: I do.
Randy: You say you’re aggressive when it comes to liposuction. What do you mean by that?
Dr. Chasan: Well, I like to get a great result. And I think that all surgeons want the best-looking contour. And if you look at the consistency of fat, if you take a steak, imagine just for analogy. You cut off like gristle, there’s certain parts that the fat just kind of rolls off the steak, and there’s a part that’s gristly, our bodies are like that. Our bodies have that gristly fat too. And so there’s certain areas of the body where you can suction, and it’s the low hanging fruit, okay? And it’s pretty easy. But when you get into that gristly fat stuff, that’s where I need to be a little more aggressive. Now, I think techniques like ultrasound-assisted liposuction, laser-assisted liposuction, those techniques create a thermal injury. Those create more tissue injury.
Randy: You don’t like those.
Dr. Chasan: I don’t because they cause more scarring. They cause more scarring. So I use a technique called SAFE liposuction. It’s a acronym for separation, aspiration, fat equalization. And you take a special cannula that is kind of like an internal cheese grater. So you’re able to take that cannula and that gristly fat that normally a normal liposuction can…it just penetrates, but you don’t get that much fat. You can actually internally remove that dense fat right under the skin. And it does it very smoothly because you do it off-suction. And if you keep doing that, you can be much more aggressive, remove much more fat more safely, smooth. And then what you do, then you aspirate the fat, and then you go back and this internal cheese grater kind of thing allows little fat grafts to be laid down. So the overall result’s smoother. And when I say more aggressive, you’ve just done maybe 20% or 30% more fat removal and contouring than traditional techniques.
Randy: So when you see or hear about people using, you know, these power-assisted cannulas, and all these different things, or…
Dr. Chasan: Well, power-assisted is different. I do use power-assisted, which makes it easier and…
Randy: But like ultrasound or laser lipo, or things like this, because logically it sounds…
Dr. Chasan: It sounds good.
Randy: …like you get more fat.
Dr. Chasan: Right. Go in there and destroy the fat, and you suck it all out. There’s a lot of things in my world…
Randy: But what’s wrong with that? Help us understand.
Dr. Chasan: Yeah, okay. There’s a lot of things in my world…you know, it’s all about the detail. And so they sound good, but not necessarily are good. So if you go in there with a laser and you zap the fat and you create a thermal injury, you get more scar tissue. And if you have more scar tissue, well, things are going to be a little more irregular, things are going to contract. And then if you go back and you want to do a touch-up liposuction, you’ll know it. It feels like scar. So if you can do that kind of fat removal or even more fat removal without the thermal injury associated with it, I think that’s better.
Randy: Is it a finesse kind of job for you?
Dr. Chasan: Oh there’s a lot of finesse. Yeah, there’s a lot of finesse.
Randy: Tedious work?
Dr. Chasan: Not so tedious, but it’s contouring. It’s, again, using our artistic ability, and knowing where your cannula is all the time, and contouring, and looking, and having that three-dimensional eye on how you’re contouring the tissues.
Randy: Are you doing all areas of the body, nowadays?
Dr. Chasan: Pretty much. I mean, I would say in women, the most common areas are the abdomen, the hips, the flanks, or, you know, the brow line, the inner and outer thighs, the inner knee, and the arms. Those are the most common [inaudible 00:03:24].
Randy: How do the arms treat? Pretty well?
Dr. Chasan: They do really well.
Randy: Bra fat on the back? What about the back?
Dr. Chasan: Wonderful, wonderful. The liposuction in the right candidate is a great operation.
