Controversies in Plastic Surgery: Suction-Assisted Lipectomy and the hCG Protocol for Obesity Treatment
December 1987
in “
Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
”
TLDR The document concludes that the hCG protocol may help in obesity treatment and could be scientifically justified, but more research is needed.
The 1987 document discusses the effectiveness and controversies surrounding suction-assisted lipectomy (SAL) and the human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) protocol for obesity treatment. It suggests that while SAL is popular for body contouring, it may not be suitable for obesity treatment due to the potential for adipose tissue regeneration. The document also presents the hCG protocol as a comprehensive treatment for obesity, which includes a 500-kcal diet, behavior modification, and hCG injections. The authors report on a study of 450 patients treated with the hCG method from 1971 to 1979, showing substantial weight loss and minimal complications, with no cases of permanent alopecia among over 12,000 treated subjects. They conclude that hCG may have lipolytic activity and its use in obesity treatment could be biochemically justified, potentially involving the hypothalamic region or human growth hormone (hGH) secretion, and that the ß-endorphin content in hCG may contribute to a sense of well-being in patients. However, they emphasize that more research is needed to confirm these hypotheses.
