Lipogems Flashcards
What is Lipogems?
Lipogems is a gentle procedure. It redistributes your body’s own fat to provide support and cushioning to areas of your body that have been damaged or injured. Your pain doctor, who’s experienced in the Lipogems procedure, uses just a local anesthetic to remove the fat from either your stomach or your thighs.
Dr. Leon Reyfman then uses a device that’s been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to clean and rinse the harvested fat. The clean fat then is injected into the areas of your body that are causing you the most discomfort. You need only give a small amount of fat for the process to be effective. As little as two to six tablespoons is all that’s needed to create a natural pain reliever.
Healing Process
Lipogems is a same-day procedure performed in your Brooklyn doctor’s office in about 60 to 90 minutes, with minimal recovery time. You have to restrict heavy lifting and rigorous activity for about a week. You may be slightly sore where the fat was removed for a couple days, and the area may drain. But it’s minimal and usually ends within a day.
You may have to wear a compression garment for a day or two following the procedure. The entire healing process lasts about six to eight weeks. Your NYC pain doctor monitors you until you’re ready to return to your previous level of unrestricted activity. You can expect to see continued healing for as long as three months.
Keeping It All Natural
The Lipogems process relies on reducing the size of the fat clusters. No additional enzymes are needed. Instead, your physician uses sterile saline to wash and then rinse the harvested fat tissue. This all-natural process reduces the risk of adding inflammatory materials — such as blood and residue from natural oils — into the tissue.
What’s left is a microenvironment that includes small cells called pericytes. These very small cells are injected back into your body through a thin needle. Pericytes get the signal to travel to the injured area and begin attacking the inflammation causing your pain. Your fat in essence becomes an active, moving chemical colony of healing.
Where It’s Most Effective
Lipogems is most effective in treating conditions that left you with soft tissue damage. Injuries and illnesses that damage your soft tissue are sometimes difficult to treat. For example:
Partial rotator cuff tears Meniscal tears Knee arthritis Labral tears Patella tendon tears Osteoarthritis Your fat has a higher percentage of stem cells — they are effective at regenerating and multiplying to form new tissue where you need it most. Other painful areas where the Lipogems process of removing fat stem cells may offer a preferable solution to bone marrow stem cells include:
Hips Back Shoulders Hands Feet
The Science behind Lipogems
Your fat tissue contains agents designed to aid your body’s repair and healing. Lipogems maintains the integrity of those natural restorative characteristics, which leads to the ultimate healing microenvironment. The harvested cells treated with Lipogems remain viable longer than other stem cell tissues.
In addition to working better and quicker, Lipogems-treated stem cells minimize any risk of infection, practically eliminate any chance of rejection and greatly reduce the odds of contamination of the harvested tissue. Since this fat tissue comes from your own body and is cleaned through the Lipogems closed-loop process, risks become virtually nonexistent.
Additional Benefits of Lipogems to Ease Pain
Being able to treat painful conditions with such a natural and safe process is a tangible benefit that you may appreciate without any further convincing. There are, however, numerous other benefits your Brooklyn, NYC pain physician wants you to know about, including:
Lipogems can be done in less than a couple hours in an outpatient surgical suite or in your doctor’s office.
Saline — one of the purest forms of cleaning solutions around — is the sole compound used in the Lipogems device to remove and wash oil and blood that may carry inflammatory properties.
Light Processing. The gentle processing leaves fat tissue optimized for survivability, while maintaining its natural structure. Fat tissue is resized to create the best solution for healing in areas where the fat’s cushioning and supportive properties are most needed.
Gentle injections. Your fat gets turned into micro-fragments that can be injected through a needle usually no bigger than 22-gauge.
Works when other treatments can’t. Lipogems is especially beneficial for chronic cases that haven’t responded well to other types of treatments.
Long-lasting. Lipogems remains where your New York pain doctor injected it, which gives your body longer to use the properties of your body’s own natural healers.
Can be used in multiple locations. It’s possible for your doctor to treat several injuries or painful areas in a single visit, depending on how much fat was collected.
The Lipogems kit comes with all the tools necessary to perform a successful harvest. No enzymes, refrigeration or centrifuge is required.
Proven safe. Lipogems is approved by the FDA. It’s compliant with the agency’s regulations, as is your Brooklyn pain physician.
