Every day medical advances are happening, including surgical utensils like scalpels. In today's Health Report, plastic surgeons making better cuts.

If you have to have surgery, you want the best surgeon but you also want the surgeon using the best instruments.

You've heard it maybe on TV, the surgeon says, scalpel please and you see a metal tool. That was before. Now, many use scalpels called an electric cautery that uses heat to dissect tissue and burn vessels closed, producing smoke and a terrible odor. An alternative to traditional electric cautery is the harmonic scalpel, a device that doesn't burn tissue. It dissects and seals tissue with a high-speed ultra sonic vibration and ultra sound energy and no smoke.

"It uses a much lower temperature so there is less collateral damage to the tissue, meaning that the injury to cells away for the area where you are working is less," Dr. Lucie Capek said.

Since Jennifer Nadler was a teen, she has been big breasted and has considered surgery.

"I was double D, rapidly moving to a triple D. it scared me. I was in so much pain, back pain, neck, knee pain," said Nadler.

Dr. Capek performed a breast reduction using the harmonic scalpel, removing close to 1 and 1/2 pound from each breast. It's been six months; Jennifer says the scars are nearly gone.

"It didn't hurt after. I have heard people who had a different surgeon, who didn't have that scalpel it took a long time to heel, that it was excruciating after. I didn't feel anything," Nadler said.

Because vessels are sealed without burning the tissue, there is less bleeding, less drainage and less swelling means faster recover.

The harmonic scalpel has been used by other doctors for years. It's been slow to catch on with plastic surgeons Dr. Capek says that's because of a learning curve.

"It handles very differently from cautery. It cuts the tissue in a different way, you have to use more pressure as opposed to just a cutting motion, therefore it requires a learning curve," said Capek.