About Lipedema Central
Lipedema, understood. Care, verified.
Lipedema Central exists because the resource it provides did not. Anyone researching lipedema surgery (spelled lipoedema in the UK, Ireland and Australia) finds scattered lists, most of them years out of date, none of them complete, and none of them willing to say where their information came from. This directory was built to be the opposite: one place that lists every practice and says plainly how each fact was checked.
Who built this
Lipedema Central is run by a husband and wife, Cameron and Cassie.
Cassie was diagnosed with lipedema, and the hard part started after the diagnosis. Which surgeons actually treat it. What a full course costs. Whether insurance covers any of it, and what it takes to get an approval. The answers were spread across practice websites, insurer policy documents and forum threads, and no two sources agreed.
This site is what we wanted while we were looking. Every field on a listing is a question we needed answered ourselves, and the practices are listed whether or not they ever talk to us.
What this site is
A directory of every practice we can identify performing lipedema reduction surgery, in the United States and internationally. Each US listing carries the same structured fields: technique, anesthesia, stages treated, insurance posture, and price where a practice publishes one.
Practices that complete verification with us carry a Verified badge on their listing.
We are also collecting four things no directory currently publishes anywhere: how far out each practice is booking, whether it is accepting new lipedema patients at all, who performs the surgery, and whether the practice has ever negotiated a single case agreement with an out-of-network insurer. Those only come from asking, so we are calling every practice and asking.
What the Verified badge means
A Verified listing is one the practice itself has confirmed. Someone at the practice, usually the office manager or a patient coordinator, goes through every field on their listing and either confirms it or corrects it, either on a call or on a written form. The badge carries the date they did it, and the foot of the listing says how it was confirmed.
Listings are compiled independently of any commercial relationship.
What the badge does mean is that the practical facts came from the practice rather than from reading their website: what they charge, how they handle insurance, how far out they are booking, whether they are taking new lipedema patients, and who actually performs the surgery. Those are the things that are usually wrong or missing elsewhere, because they are not published anywhere and change often.
What the badge does not mean is that we have audited anyone's clinical work. We do not verify surgical outcomes, complication rates, or whether a practice is a good fit for any patient. Board certifications are shown as the practice states them and are worth confirming with the relevant board directly.
Unverified listings are compiled from each practice's own published material. Any practice can be verified by getting in touch. Contact us.
Corrections
If something on this site is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Contact.
Image credits
Before and after liposuction photograph by Borgardottir, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Ordinary fat beside lipedema fat by Christelletelle, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Type III lipedema photograph by Jmarchn, licensed CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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