 (1).jpg)
It’s for this reason that Los Angeles-based cosmetic surgeon Dr Aaron Rollins developed AirSculpt–an innovative and minimally-invasive, FDA-approved body contouring procedure that permanently removes excess fat without any of the risks or side effects associated with traditional liposuction.
What is AirSculpt?
While both liposuction and AirSculpt permanently remove excess fat, Dr Rollins says that is where the similarities end. “AirSculpt is the next generation of fat removal and body contouring,” explains Dr Rollins, who has been performing body procedures for over 15 years.“Regular liposuction is brutal–you are essentially scraping out fat with a large cheese grater on a stick, which in the process can sometimes damage muscle and skin tissue. AirSculpt is less invasive–we don’t cause trauma to the surrounding skin structures. We remove fat in a precise and automated way using a specially-designed cannula that gently plucks out the fat cells through a pin-sized hole, without the need for needles, scalpels or stitches.”
What happens during the procedure?
The patient is awake throughout the procedure, which according to Dr Rollins, gives them more control of the contouring process.The treatment area is numbed using a needle-free jet injector, which pushes an anaesthetic fluid through the skin. Instead of a scalpel, a biopsy punch tool is used to create a two-millimetre-wide entry point, where a local anaesthetic solution is passed through to numb the fat cells.
The AirSculpt handpiece drives a fine cannula that is inserted in the treatment area–here it rapidly oscillates and gently sucks out unwanted fat, cell-by-cell. This process also creates heat that stimulates collagen and elastin, which tightens the skin at the same time.
It can take anything from 30 minutes to a couple of hours depending on the size of the treatment area. Those who want to make use of the freshly-extracted fat can have it transferred to parts of the body that need extra plumping, like the breasts, bottom and hands.