CoolSculpting vs. Lipo: what are the differences between these treatments? (Photo)

Thank you for your photograph. Traditional liposuction is the best way currently to achieve the best body contouring. Cool sculpting is a minimally invasive way to reduce fat modestly. Trust your instincts go with the liposuction.

Dr. ES

Liposuction gives dramatic results which you can really see and if you are getting it done under local tum. anesthesia with the micro cannulas for only $5000 then you are getting a great price for the full abdomen and hips. Go for the sure bet. Sincerely,David Hansen,MD

The goal of both procedures, Cool Sculpting and Laser Lipo, is to reduce fat in a targeted area.  They use different mechanisms to achieve this goal.  Whereas Cool Sculpting freezes the fat, Laser Lipo melts it.  The main difference is Laser Lipo also tightens the skin. Therefore, best results for sculpting and trimming fat will be seen with Laser Lipo. However, it is important to consider Laser Lipo is minimally invasive in the area where the laser must be inserted. This will result a tiny scar of only a couple millimeters. Cool Sculpting is completely non-invasive. There is essentially no down time with either procedure; however, with the Laser Lipo it may be necessary for the patient to be driven home due to mild sedation.  Laser Lipo usually requires one treatment while Cool Sculpting requires multiple treatments.

After 30 years performing liposuction and three years doing cool sculpting, my thoughts are:

1) Cool sculpting done three times to the same area, as recommended, still does not produce liposuction quality results.

2) Cool sculpting does not tighten skin as liposuction does, so there is often loose skin after.

3) Although many of my patients understand that it takes three cool sculpting procedures to see decent results, because of the recurring cost, many do not plan to complete the series, so they erroneously compare the cost of one or two treatments to the cost of liposuction. Actually when more than one area is correctly treated three times with cool sculpting, liposuction is often cheaper!

4) Liposuction is a one time treatment with a one day recovery when done under local anesthesia.

5) When all this is carefully explained to my patients, nine out of ten choose liposuction.

Great question! The non invasive "CoolSculpting" offers a series of treatments at an hour or less each that allows the sub dermal to subcutaneous fat to be frozen. Frezzing does allow the contents of each fat cell to be released. BUT the cells are still there, so gaining weight can cause the fat to re occur. Also this is not one visit to the office but at least 5 to 6 even up to 10. Therefore a time factor vs results must be considered. As for fees, here in Miami each session is $700. Thus if you had 7 sessions = $4,900 + garments + massages + pills. Now invasive lipo is 99% one time operation. Healing usually 3 weeks. Yes anesthesia is needed but the fees range from $3,000 to $5,000 (includes massages, garments) so YOU need to decide which course is better for you. I personally have seen failed icing experiences that are easily helped by lipo surgery. Just one observers opinion. 

Cool Sculpting is one of the few modalities (of non-invasive fat reduction) that I am aware of that actually work. The other one that I personally have confidence in is Liposonix. The big difference in my opinion between the noninvasive options and liposuction (besides the obvious surgery vs. non surgery) is with liposuction the surgeon has the ability to control the amount of fat removed, and tailor that to the patient. With the noninvasive options, you get what you get: while it is typically a real difference, it may not be as much as you were looking for. The tough part is defining and predicting how much you will achieve with the noninvasive option, and deciding if that will be enough to make you happy. If your surgeon offers some sort of guarantee with the CoolSculpt (I have heard of this, and we do this with Liposonix) then that may give you some degree of confidence to go in that direction. Good luck!

They are two different approaches to address excess fat.  Neither will address loose, or redundant skin.  coolsculpting can remove, on average about 20% of the fat you can pinch.  For some, that is very dramatic, for others this is only a modest result.  It does, however, have the advantage of lower fees because no anesthesia is used and there is no downtime.  You can resume all activities that day.  It may take several sessions and multiple hours to address a number of areas.  With surgical liposuction, much more can be accomplished in a brief operative procedure.  It will require recovery that is not necessarily terribly painful, but requires time before resuming all activities, and use of a compression garment.  It is important to have a discussion with your surgeon that allows you to understand the differences, and have realistic expectations of what each procedure can achieve.

coolsculpting freezes the fat, and then the cells die off.  But it isn't as dramatic as liposuction.  There are trade offs either way.  With coolsculpting, you have no incisions, no downtime, but you remove about 25% of the fat.  When you use liposuction, you have a bit of downtime, and incisions, but you remove way more fat (60-80%).  This all comes down to managing your expectations to make YOU happy.  If you want the maximum result, do the liposuction.  But coopsculpting is a very good alternative for you and has not as many possible problems.  If it doesn't meet your expectations, you can always then do the liposuction.

Good luck

Dan Mills MD FACS

Cool Sculpting is a nonsurgical technique that cools the fat tissue and causes it to shrink. Liposuction actually removes that fat cells. The results tend to be better for liposuction but the cost may be higher. 

Based on the picture, I would favor liposuction of the abdomen and love handle area which would more likely give a better result than nonsurgical techniques.