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Oct. 28, 2024

Why liposuction is better than ever [Maria LoTempio, MD, New York City]

New York plastic surgeon Dr. Maria LoTempio takes us through her approach to liposuction and reveals how fat transfer technologies and techniques have evolved throughout her career.

Links

Read more about https://www.lotempioplasticsurgery.com/ Dr....

New York plastic surgeon Dr. Maria LoTempio takes us through her approach to liposuction and reveals how fat transfer technologies and techniques have evolved throughout her career.

Links

Read more about New York City plastic surgeon Dr. Maria LoTempio

Follow Dr. LoTempio on Instagram @drlotempionyc

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Transcript

Dr. LoTempio (00:00):
Hi, I am Dr. Maria LoTempio. I'm a board certified plastic surgeon living in New York City.

Eva Sheie (00:06):
So tell me about your approach to liposuction. What kind of technology do you use? Are you particular about processing fat? How do you think about lipo?

Dr. LoTempio (00:18):
Right. Yeah, so it's interesting. I've been doing liposuction now for 25 years, so I can't believe I'm actually saying that. So I've been fortunate enough to see a lot of different methods of technology to collect the fat, a lot of different methods to process the fat and different methods to actually inject the fat. So I can probably tell you that, God doing this years and years and years ago, it was painful not for the patient, but for me because everything was handheld

Eva Sheie (00:53):
Physical. Yeah.

Dr. LoTempio (00:54):
It was, yeah, super physical. I mean, instead of going to the gym, you would just do this and you get your nice arm movements and your biceps and triceps and there you go. But it's slower, more time consuming. We do use tumescent fluid, and a long time ago when we first started doing this, I first started doing this, the amount of epi and the amount of lidocaine was a little bit less than what we use now, a little bit more bleeding. So, and the technology, I mean, we used suction assisted liposuction, which was twice as long and aggressive and.

Eva Sheie (01:29):
Oh back then, yeah,

Dr. LoTempio (01:32):
Yeah. And not necessarily the best results. You really had to be very particular how you harvested the fat without causing deficits like the divots, the contour issues. So then they started, I started doing the suction assisted with ultrasound, and then we added some energy devices into that, and that seemed to be pretty good, except we had to worry about burns from the ultrasound device, and there's a whole nother safety issue with that. So that didn't last long in my armamentarium. And then I kind of went to the MicroAire and that's kind of where I think most of us are hanging out now with MicroAire which is a power assisted device, and you got your increments of different types of cannulas, and nowadays we got hundreds to choose from and sizes and lengths and the girth of the cannula and all these things, different types of jaggedness for the fibrosis and for scarring and for redos, and it's really like, it's great. Where before we had two or three cannulas. And then there's other devices such as an air compression that propels the machine, and that's probably the quickest way to do it.

Eva Sheie (02:51):
There's a compressor on your liposuction machine?

Dr. LoTempio (02:54):
Yeah. There's an air compression not in the room, but in a facility, and that allows the technology of the hand piece to vibrate at a very high frequency. One of the other things is we went back in early 2005 and six and seven with smart lipo, and that was like the gem. Did it do anything? No, but it sounds like, hey, it's smart lipo versus dumb lipo. Okay. What's so smart about it? And then I think really where we've gotten into now, which is what I use in my practice very regularly, is MicroAire with my beautiful multitude personalized cannulas with my purple hand piece and Renuvion, which is radio frequency through helium gas. And that's where I pretty much feel most comfortable in my private practice setting and can pretty much guarantee the results that my patients want. And then I actually inject using the MicroAire, where before I had syringes and I had a nurse taking the fat from these buckets and pouring into syringes and taking these little syringes, 10 ccs and going through each a little.

(04:01):
And that took five, six hours to do buttocks just to inject the fat. Then we went into bigger syringes, like 60 cc syringes. And then we were like, well, how are we going to process the FLA fat? And do we put it in centrifuge? And we used to put on telfa and pat it and talk to it and say, Hey, nice fat, you're great. Go, go survive. And all the different companies started putting out all these different mechanisms by which the bad part of the fat is removed and the healthy part of the fat is injected with the stem cells. And all of it had some role. But I feel at this point, really the simplest is the less manipulation of the fat the better. And I think there is a reason to maybe if per chance, the fat's a little bit too bloody that it can cause some issues.

(04:58):
So you can wash the fat if you need to with just plain lactate ringers. But I'm like more natural, let's not really disrupt things and let the body enjoy what it has. I do inject with the microaire, and that's why I'm able to be super precise and very quick. Also in those fibrous difficult buttocks, that power behind the injection can really nicely, with small amounts of fat in retrograde fashion, to be able to put just kind of precisely in spots where you want it to be, to really create the shape that the patient wants.

Eva Sheie (05:32):
Where can we see these results of yours?

Dr. LoTempio (05:35):
RealSelf, online, more importantly, come to my office, fifth Avenue, next to Sephora.

Eva Sheie (05:41):
Is there anything we can see on Instagram?

Dr. LoTempio (05:44):
Some of them are, except Instagram has an issue now that they constantly take.

Eva Sheie (05:51):
A butt policy.

Dr. LoTempio (05:51):
Yeah, they're constantly taking it down. Now I tell people, go meet your surgeon. Go talk to them. Go see their before and afters. I have 200, 300 slides of BBLs.

Eva Sheie (06:02):
If there are some photos online, there are many more to see when we come to the office.

Dr. LoTempio (06:08):
Yeah. And those we just can't put online. A lot of them, those are just, we can't for various privacy reasons, confidentiality.

Eva Sheie (06:15):
Too beautiful to see. You just got to come in.

Dr. LoTempio (06:19):
It's all about the beauty of the booty.

Eva Sheie (06:23):
On this podcast, we bring you directly to the doctors who are where before meets after. Links to our guest's website and contact info are in your show notes. Follow us on Instagram @wherebeforemeetsafter. Where Before Meets After is a production of The Axis, the podcast agency for aesthetics, theaxis.io.

Maria LoTempio, MD Profile Photo

Maria LoTempio, MD

Plastic Surgeon in New York City

Known internationally for delivering dream results, Dr. Maria LoTempio is down-to-earth, compassionate, and committed to helping her patients feel more confident.

Driven to help people near and far love what they see in the mirror, Dr. LoTempio opened a cosmetic practice in Dubai midway through her career and commuted there from New York every four weeks for four years.

Dr. LoTempio’s extended training and niche experiences shaped her into a well-rounded plastic surgeon. Her early background in nursing taught her how to listen, be available, and provide personalized care and support to patients. Later, her surgical background in breast reconstruction solidified her ability to detect whether patients are at risk of cancer or autoimmune diseases before moving forward with surgery.