Most people, including physicians, have little awareness of the term Mesotherapy and ever fewer understand what Mesotherapy does. It has recently gained some recognition in the Aesthetic field as an easy treatment for removal of fat deposits and for body sculpting. Yet few can actually define the term Mesotherapy.

This is not surprising, as Mesotherapy was originally developed in France as a technique to treat many disorders -- from hearing loss to baldness. The name Mesotherapy is derived from the area treated, that is, the mesoderm, or the middle layer of the skin. Mesotherapy is really an injection technique and originally used to describe an injection into the mesoderm of the skin and was coined to differentiate the technique from the more common terms intramuscular and subcutaneous. It is a nonspecific term, and in most instances, does not refer to fat removal or body sculpting.

Mesotherapy is simply a method of delivering a single drug or a concoction of drugs to a specific layer of the skin. A better term, in my opinion, would have been mesocutaneous. Even allowing that Mesotherapy works, it is really a subcutaneous injection, and not a mesodermal injection. It is a irrefutable fact that fat lies in the subcutaneous layer of the body.
It is also important to realize that there is not even one scientific study on the safety or efficacy of Mesotherapy in the medical literature, and there are no standardized drug regimens used in treating fat. Every practitioner of Mesotherapy just "does his thing" -- making any meaningful comparison of results between different doctors impossible. And, to complicate matters further, many practitioners of Mesotherapy are unlicensed individuals.

The various protocols are at the discretion of the individual practitioner, and most include varying quantities of prescription and nonprescription drugs, herbs, vitamins, hormones, and other "unspecified agents." Most of these agents are manufactured nonsterile, and are intended for oral supplemental use. Some of these agents are considered lipid soluble, and some are not: and both are mixed into the same cocktail.

No one has studied any of these agents for the uses to which they are being put in Mesotherapy, and no one has even studied the interaction of these agents with one another. Using these agents in a manner that they were not intended raises serious safety and efficacy concerns for ethical practitioners.

Currently, Mesotherapy is marketed as a simple alternative to liposculpture: Mesotherapy solutions are injected into localized fat deposits and are said to just miraculously dissolve the fat. It sounds so easy and so simple. Lipostabil ("lipodissolve") is an active ingredient in most mesotherapy cocktails and is said to dissolve the fat. But Lipostabil ("lipodissolve") does not actually dissolve the fat; rather, it kills fat cells and releases this oily fat into the tissues. It is the body's resulting healing process to this injury that removes the byproducts of the process, and the end result is a permanent loss of fat cells in the area of injection.

Lipostabil ("lipodissolve")is a combination product and is considered a nutritional supplement. It is not intended for injection into the body and is therefore not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration

Practitioners of Mesotherapy have never reported any scientific studies of how well this process actually works, and of course have not reported on the side effects and complications either. Most reports of complications come from Europe, after the unfortunate patient consults another physician. These complications have included skin atrophy, skin necrosis, infection, and irregular pigmentation and irregular skin surfaces.

In summary, Mesotherapy is a non-standardized, nonscientific method which is promoted as a simple alternative to liposculpture. There is absolutely no verifiable information on the safety and efficacy of Mesotherapy in the medical literature. Liposculpture remains as the only proven safe and effective form of fat removal currently available. When considering Mesotherapy, one should adopt an attitude of "caveat emptor."