effects of crash dieting

By Mary Ann Roser AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Sunday, Septe mber 24, 2006 Cindy and Joey Bates of Pflugerville look at their daughter and are thrilled by what they see: The fat girl who was always teased is now a lovely 13-year-old confident, popular with boys and, for the first time, happy with her body. Representatives of two national medical organizations say they think that Brooke is one of the youngest people in the United States, if not the youngest, to have liposuction, a procedure they say should be used for body contouring, not weight loss. Brooke was 12 when an Austin plastic surgeon operated on her in March and again in May to alter her shape and remove 45 pounds of fat and skin. A Houston plastic surgeon said he heard of a 12-year-old having liposuction about a decade ago, but he declined to name the doctor who performed it. Most of the experts said their youngest patients have been 15 to 17 and were candidates only because they had stopped growing and had an ill-pro- portioned body part to correct. Data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons show that liposuction among adolescents 18 and younger represented 1 percent of all liposuction procedures in 2005. Joel Schlessinger, president-elect of the American Society for Cosmetic Dermatology and Aesthetic Surgery. Rod Rohrich of Dallas, past president and spokesman for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, put it: "Don t run to your plastic surgeon. " None of the experts said Brooke s surgeon breached an ethical standard. Robert Ersek, who calls himself "the biggest fat sucker in Texas," lived up to his moniker when he liposuctioned 35 pounds of fat from Brooke s arms, back and upper midsection in March and removed another 10 pounds most of it skin in May by doing a tummy tuck. Spokespeople with the American Society of Plastic Surgeons said removing 35 pounds at once is an extremely large, if not dangerous, amount. Ersek acknowledged it was "a mega amount" of fat and "off the scale," but he is not alone in doing large-volume liposuction or in doing the procedure for weight loss. Peter B. Fodor of Los Angeles, former president of American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, said most mainstream plastic surgeons limit the amount of fat they draw from adults to about eight pounds per operation. Serious side effects can include fluid in the lungs, toxicity from the local anesthesia and even death. Gerald Pitman, associate professor of surgery at the New York University School of Medicine. He performed liposuction on himself in front of local news cameras in 2004 to demonstrate that stem cells can be found in fat, which brought a reprimand from the Travis County Medical Society for treating himself. " He is proud of the results, and the Bates family could not be happier. " asked Joey Bates, 53, owner of Bates Backhoe Inc. " Brooke had been overweight she since was 2 1/2, and at home recently, she showed photographs of herself at various ages. "She s probably lost enough weight to build two other people in the time she s been dieting," Joey Bates said. A couple of times, she said she was called by the physical education teacher because Brooke s heart was racing. Cindy Bates described Brooke, who is the only member of her immediate family who is large, weighing herself twice a day while dieting and crying at how little she was able to lose. They approached Ersek because Joey Bates had gone to him about 20 years earlier for plastic surgery after a car crash. Schlessinger and others said Brooke sounded more like a potential candidate for bariatric surgery, which targets the stomach and/or intestines and limits the amount of food that can be eaten. Cindy Bates said it was time to fix Brooke s problem quickly, and they believed that liposuction offered the best solution, not only for Brooke s health but her self-esteem, which was being eroded by regular doses of ridicule. She said her daughter would sometimes dissolve into tears by the end of the school day. Ersek found Brooke s longstanding inability to lose weight and keep it off compelling, but a personal comment about her father sealed his decision. "One of the clinchers was, the girl said, My father has cancer, and I would like him to see me in a dress before he dies, " Ersek said. At the time of her first surgery, Brooke weighed 218 and stood 5 feet, 5 inches.

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