14 DAY TRIAL // Liposuctions are a fairly common medical procedure these days. The problem is that they come with some unpleasant side effects and are not exactly patient-friendly.
Thus, when carrying out a liposuction, doctors insert a needle into the patient's body and use it to break up fat cells which are later vacuumed out. The downside is that, every once in a while, connective tissue and nerves are also removed.
In a paper in the journal Chemical & Engineering News, researchers explain that this happens because the fat cells are broken up mechanically, i.e. by moving the needle back and forth.
To solve this problem, scientists propose that gold nanoparticles be used to literally melt fat, and thus make it easier to suck it out of a patient's body without damaging surrounding tissues.
The idea is to inject such nanoparticles into the body areas targeted by the procedure, and then use an infrared beam to get them to melt the fat cells, Phys Org explains.
Since fat cells melt at fairly low temperatures, nearby tissues and nerves should not be affected by this procedure in any way. On the contrary, they would have considerably higher chances of not being removed together with the fat.
As detailed in the journal Chemical & Engineering News, this novel technique is dubbed NanoLipo. The procedure is currently being tested on animals, and researchers expect they will be able to roll out clinical trials involving human patients by the end of this year.