(HealthDay)—Liposuction improves the quality of life for women with lipedema, according to a study published in the December issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Anna-Theresa Bauer, M.D., from Technical University Munich in Germany, and colleagues conducted an online survey of 209 female patients (average age, 38.5 years) with lipedema who had undergone tumescent liposuction to understand women’s experiences with onset and progression of the disease.

The researchers found that most of the participants noticed a first manifestation of the disease at the age of 16 years. Diagnosis took a mean of 15 years. The majority of patients reported that liposuction led to a significant reduction in pain, swelling, tenderness, and easy bruising. The prevalence of hypothyroidism (35.9 percent) and depression (23 percent) was higher than the average prevalence in the German population. The respondents had a low prevalence of both type 1 (1.4 percent) and type 2 (1 percent) diabetes. Nearly one-quarter of lipedema patients had a migraine diagnosis (22.5 percent), and two-thirds of these respondents (68.1 percent) said the frequency and/or intensity of migraine attacks markedly declined after liposuction.

“Liposuction yields long-lasting positive effects in lipedema patients, leading to a marked increase in their quality of life,” the authors write.