Mesotherapy: Not Quite Mainstream

Despite its widespread use in Europe for years and some recent popularity in the United States, many physicians and surgeons are a bit leery about mesotherapy treatment for body shaping and weight loss. Mesotherapy involves injecting a cocktail of substances directly into fatty tissue with the goal of dissolving it and causing the body to absorb it. Thus anywhere this collection of vitamins and drugs are injected, the fat essentially melts away or disappears. Because of this theoretical mechanism of action, the injections are marketed under names such as Lipodissolve.

 

 

Most mesotherapy injections include phosphatidylcholine and deoxycholate though they may also include hormones, steroids, vitamins, minerals, anesthetics, and antibiotics. Phosphatidylcholine is naturally found within cell membranes and is intended to break apart the cell membranes of fat (lipid) cells. Deoxycholate, on the other hand, is a bile acid and, like a detergent, is able to dissolve fat.

 

While each component chemical in the cocktail is FDA-approved to be injected into the body, the cocktails as a whole are usually not nor have they been approved by the FDA for the goal of fat reduction in the US. The use of these injections is a source of debate among doctors, surgeons and aesthetic practitioners. Further, the use of mesotherapy has received the attention of state lawmakers and certain legislators have called for a ban on mesotherapy injections in their states.

 

Aside from a lack of approval by the FDA, mesotherapy side effects have been troubling. Since there is no real control on the composition of injected chemicals in mesotherapy, the benefits are difficult to document and the mesotherapy side effects are also difficult to trace. If a dozen chemicals are injected into the body and the patient develops some systemic side effects, which agent was to blame? How should that side effect be treated if it is unclear what caused it? The most common side effect of the mesotherapy treatment is bruising, which goes away in time. One of the more troubling and permanent side effects of mesotherapy is the dimpling of fatty areas under the skin.

 

Since the mesotherapy injection only dissolves fat with which it comes into contact, if the mesotherapy does not fully infiltrate an area then it leaves fat behind and pits where the fat as been absorbed. This is obviously visually unappealing. More serious is the occurrence of serious skin infections that can occur with mesotherapy. Not only can bacteria from the skin’s surface be introduced into the body, but the lack of strict FDA guidelines on mesotherapy components can lead to unsterile injections.

 

Even avid practitioners of the procedure fully admit that mesotherapy results in no real body changes in one out of 20 patients. Considering a session of mesotherapy costs around $400, the effects usually do not appear for several weeks, and mesoptherapy injections may need to be repeated several times to achieve the desired effect. Putative patients are cautioned to consider all weight loss, cosmetic surgery, and non-surgical aesthetic procedures and their relative cost before making a decision.