If someone was obese, and didn’t care about scars from surgical incisions, could a surgeon just cut them open, remove most of the fat from their body, and sew them back up? I know there are fat removal procedures used in cosmetic surgery (liposuction), but I was thinking about something that might be used on someone who was more concerned about the health effects of obesity.
IIRC this is sort of the same thing as the problem faced in high volume liposuction. The two main problems are if you are removing high volumes of fat there will usually be a fair amount of bleeding, and danger of shock as your body has to quickly adjust to the fluid and mass loss. Excess skin after the fact can also turn inot a hygiene & health issue.
Similar problems face doctors who have to remove mega tumors. I’m not sure ho the biochemistry works but the human body is fairly sensitive to losing lots of fluid in a short amount of time.
Could they hook you up to IV Fluids for a while to counteract any fluid loss??
Would such a surgery even be effective as one would suspect the body fat would be all over the body - you’d have to operate on arms, legs, butt, torso, etc…
I’m no doctor, but from what I understand about that type of thing, the strain it would put on the patient’s heart, both from the massive loss of tissue and blood among would likely be fatal. Add that to the huge amount of anesthetic that would be necessary to perform such an operation, and the number of surgeries it would require to remove fat from the various parts of the body necessary, and I can’t imagine it would be very easy. And, like astro said, the complications afterward (with the excess skin alone!), should the patient survive, would strain the heart even further.
I’m pretty dubious about the idea that surgically removing fat would improve health. From what I’ve read, obesity is a symptom more than a disease. I believe it is the poor diet and lack of exercise associated with obesity that is the real killer.