Smartlipo appears to be catching the fancy of Americans looking to trim down their excess fat. Smartlipo is yet another liposuction technique in which a laser is used to melt excess fat. Cynosure Inc, the US marketer of Smartlipo claims that thousands of people have undergone a Smartlipo procedure since its introduction just about a year ago.
 
Like traditional liposuction techniques, Smartlipo requires local anesthesia and is minimally invasive. But Smartlipo is much more expensive. So the question becomes, does Smartlipo work any better than existing procedures?
 
Doctors are skeptical that this laser based liposuction technique works any better than the most commonly used procedure known as tumescent liposuction.

Smartlpo claims to "liquefy the fat" making it easier to separate from the body, thus allowing plastic surgeons to better shape a person's body. Using Smartlipo laser, surgeons make small incisions in the skin where the patient's fat needs to be removed. That area is then infused with fluids including drugs which would numb that area and compress the blood vessels so that the patient doesn't have a lot of blood loss. The laser is then inserted through the cuts and the fat that it melts is siphoned out through tubes.
 
The difference between Smartlipo and tumescent liposuction is that there is no laser involved in tumescent liposuction. In Tumescent liposuction, surgeons use instruments called cannulas which help loosen the body fat. Once the fat loosens, surgeons suction the fat out of the body.
 
When comparing Smartlipo to a more traditional liposuction technique, surgeons and patients can perhaps agree that Smartlipo is perhaps more advantageous. That's because in traditional liposuction, patients are put to sleep using general anesthesia and surgeons remove large amounts of fat. Anytime general anesthesia is used, the surgery becomes more risky and also patients may require longer periods of time to recover. With tumescent liposuction and Smartlipo, the recovery time is very small and general anesthesia is not used.
 
Thus far, there is no clear cut advantage for using Smartlipo except for the fact that it uses a laser.  Only time will tell if Smartlipo will become the standard for liposuction techniques.