I want to share with you one of my favorite quotes, a quote which has a lot to say about the potential for cosmetic surgery:

“I recognized that working superficially, I had the ability well beyond the simple removal of fatty bulges. Why not use it as a sculpting tool, to obtain imaginary shape, the ideal profile that we dream about creating?”

That quote, which was written over 20 years ago, is from Professor Marco Gasparotti, an Italian doctor and one of the earliest pioneers of liposuction. Professor Gasparotti was one of the first, and until recently one of the last, doctors to explore the art and possibility of aesthetic surgery. He realized, decades ago, that cosmetic surgery offered the possibility to uncover a person’s ideal body shape.

After Gasparotti’s contribution, however, the cosmetic study of liposuction went in the wrong direction, I feel. There was no further exploration of what amazing results liposculpture could achieve for the patient; doctors confined themselves to taking out contour irregularities and excess fat.

Why was that the case? Well, in the past, liposuction technology wouldn’t let a cosmetic surgeon do anything more than removing bulges! We were limited by the fact that our tools wouldn’t allow us to work on the layer of superficial fat that all patients have. That means that our results, in the past, were always limited to one dimension.

The shame, I feel, is that what previously was just a limitation of technology became a limitation of ideas. We learned that there was only one right way to perform liposuction, and that meant ignoring the new capabilities of break-through technologies!

I’ve met quite a few doctors who seem unable to wrap their head around the possibilities for a new generation of liposculpture technology. They argue that “it’s just not done.” But the truth is, experts like Gasparotti knew that cosmetic surgery cannot keep looking backward into the past. What was once impossible is now possible, and we can obtain superior results for patients today, by doing far more than removing bumps and lumps, but instead unlocking the patients ideal shape.

Wishing you good health,
Dr. Millard