What Should I Know Before I Get Liposuction?

Liposuction is one of the most popular procedures in the history of cosmetic surgery

. For twelve out of the last thirteen years, it has topped the charts as the most commonly performed cosmetic surgery in the United States. Last year, even during a recession, over 300,000 liposuctions were performed in America alone. The procedure experiences similar success in other parts of the world such as Europe, South America and parts of Asia.

However, despite the procedure's popularity, many people don't understand it. This article will help to give the reader a basic understanding of liposuction.

The word liposuction means literally the suction of fat. The surgery removes excess body fat with the help of suction. Other names for the surgery include lipoplasty and suction lipectomy.

Prior to the surgery, a patient and his or her surgeon meet and decide on a specific target area (or a few areas) from which the patient would like to have fat removed. On the day of surgery, the patient comes in and gets the target area numbed, usually through local anesthetic.

During the surgery, a surgeon makes small incisions in the skin overlying the target area. Then he or she inserts a sort of special hollow tube called a cannula. This cannula is vacuum powered, and it suctions fat from the body as the surgeon moves it back and forth through the fatty tissue.

The exact particulars of the surgery and recovery depend somewhat on the technique which the operating surgeon chooses to use. The most common technique is called the tumescent method. The tumescent method was developed during the mid 80's, and it is performed by injecting large amounts of fluids into the target area. These fluids include anesthetic and medicines that help to reduce blood loss. The insertion of these fluids causes the fatty tissue to "tumesce" or become firm and swollen. After the surgery, these fluids gradually drain from the body over the course of a few to several days.

A number of other techniques have been developed in the relatively recent past. Laser lipectomy breaks down fat with a surgical laser prior to its removal from the body. The water jet method uses a cannula that spurts water in order to help wash fat away. Other methods use ultrasonic or infrasonic vibrations to help loosen the fat. All of these techniques have pros and cons that can't be gone into in depth in this article. However, there is a wealth of information about them on the internet.

Liposuction can only remove a certain limited amount of fat from selected body areas, so it is not well-suited for extensive or total body weight loss.

Liposuction frequently doesn't involve as much scarring as other cosmetic surgeries, because the incisions it makes are so small (frequently only measured in millimeters). However, there is of course always some danger of scarring or the creation of other blemishes.

If you want to know more about liposuction, please consider meeting with a surgeon in your area. Many surgeons give free consultations to potential clients. Your surgeon and his surgical team should be able to answer other questions that you might have.

by: Christian Heftel

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