The term “mesotherapy” was coined by Dr. Michel Pistor, the French developer of the technique. While the Chinese used this form of pharmaceutical acupuncture 2000 years BC, the practice did not become widely utilized. Hippocrates treated the shoulder pain of a Barbary Coast shepherd in 400 BC using the nappage technique with a cactus spine. While isolated reports of similar treatments occur sporadically during the 1700s and 1800s, it wasn’t until Lebel and Pistor began treating asthma patients with procaine that mesotherapy really emerged as a separate medical discipline.

Most mesotherapy treatments utilize some form of vasodilator “to enhance the microcirculation”. This intuitive use of vasodilators has not been scientifically shown to work except in the case of Dr. LeCoz’ technique of carotid sinus injections for hypertensive crisis. In fact, a study performed in 2005 showed that mixing a vasodilator with PC/DC injections into subcutaneous fat actually made the drug rapidly migrate into the systemic circulation, leaving little effective medication at the target site—the subcutaneous fat. Mesotherapy “recipes” are often just that—a little green tea, some L-carnitine, aminophylline, and procaine—none of which are injected in pharmacologically significant dosages, and none of which have been proven to be effective at that dose in that location for the specific purpose intended. Until the safety and efficacy of each mesotherapy treatment can be proven, its practice is not recommended. The variables are numerous and the side effects, such as a pulse rate of 200 for over 2 hours, are uncomfortable and create unnecessary health risks for the patients receiving treatment.

Injection lipolysis certainly developed as an offshoot of mesotherapy. Dr. Patricia Rittes, a Brazilian dermatologist, developed the process when challenged by a patient to come up with an injection rather than surgery for her baggy lower eyelids. Caterina, aged 74, did not like her puffy lower lids. She knew that Dra. Rittes had trained with Jacques LeCoz, Pistor’s protégé.

Rittes researched the world literature and found Bobkova’s Russian work on the endovenous use of Lipostabil fpr treatment of coronary artery plaque. She also found references in Russia and in Germany regarding IV use of this drug for treating acute fat embolism. She reasoned that Lipostabil might have a similar effect on subcutaneous fat. She slowly and carefully began using Lipolstabil to treat small areas of well localized fat deposits, and published an article in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal regarding her treatments in 1995.

Because the development of injection lipolysis was clinical, rather than through a pharmaceutical company, the treatment maintains a speckled reputation. There are many practitioners of injection lipolysis who do not follow recommended guidelines, and who still use “cocktails” of multiple ingredients that may have unexpected side effects. The goal of the American Network is to standardize these treatments, and establish a protocol in which safety and efficacy of lipolysis treatments is the primary goal. In a market full of overpromised outcomes, we seek truth and science in the noninvasive body contouring field.

How Injection Lipolysis Differs from Mesotherapy