Biophysical Basics of Body Treatments: A Preliminary Study into the Correlation between Washout and Circumference Reduction

Abstract

Introduction:

Clinical studies in the field of body contouring generally demonstrate a high dispersion of treatment results, which reflects the natural inhomogeneity of clinical groups. This inhomogeneity may also be connected to the existence of both hypertrophic and hyperplastic fat tissues, which differ in their physical characteristics and contain different amounts of water. The purpose of this preliminary study was to check the hypothesis that the washout phenomenon significantly correlates with clinical results of body contouring.

Material and Methods:

Four patients (3 women and 1 man) were treated in the abdominal region with modalities (dual-frequency ultrasound and vacuum massage) that have the potential ability to reduce circumference. Total body water (TBW) was measured and recorded with bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) before and immediately after the treatment, using the same electrodes in the same body position. BIA was conducted with the Biacorpus RX 4000 using a frequency of 50 kHz in the tetrapolar configuration. To redistribute the free water in the body, all study participants were placed in a supine position for at least 15 minutes before the first BIA measurement.

Results:

This preliminary study demonstrated a strong correlation between circumference reduction and TBW loss measured using BIA. The measured value of TBW loss per 1 cm circumference reduction was 0.73 ± 0.09 L for patients with a high body mass index (BMI) treated in the abdominal area. The correlation coefficient between TBW loss and circumference reduction was 0.927.

Conclusions:

The washout phenomenon after regional body treatments can be responsible for a substantial part of the observed clinical results. Because hypertrophic and hyperplastic fat tissues theoretically demonstrate very different washout patterns, the clinical groups cannot be considered as homogeneous. Their differential diagnostics can help to preclinically extract the nonresponding group. A significantly larger test population is needed to prove that this correlation is true for different body areas and in patients with different BMIs. Additional studies are needed to prove whether BIA can be used for the reliable quantification and/or prediction of treatment results.