Facts about Liposuction

Liposuction is a technique in which excess fatty tissue is suctioned from beneath the skin. (Credit: powerbooktrance)

Molly Flanders, a 32-year-old journalist, is fit and active but she was not happy about her lower body. She decided to have liposuction to do away with the extra fat on her lower body. She did her research and went ahead with liposuction. She took a week’s off from work to let her body heal. Though she didn’t feel 100 percent fit, she was active – she would go out for movies and dinners. Molly is happy with her well-sculpted look and with liposuction in general.

Most liposuction procedures are done for cosmetic reasons. Sometime, liposuction is used to treat medical conditions like large breasts in men; lipomas or fatty lumps; fatty deposits like the hump of a buffalo, caused by hormonal imbalances that grow masses of fat on and around the neck.

Liposuction is a technique in which excess fatty tissue is suctioned from beneath the skin. Before the surgery, doctors flush the targeted area with a solution composed of lidocaine, saline and epinephrine.

Then a hollow, wand-like device called the cannula is inserted through incisions in the skin. Doctors push and pull the cannula through fatty deposits, breaking up cells, which, along with other body fluids, are suctioned out by an attached vacuuming device. The cannula and the vacuum that is used in liposuction have only been approved for body contouring and are not intended for large-scale fat removal.

There are many liposucton techniques available these days – the amount of injected fluid determines the technique used. In the ‘dry technique’, which very few doctors use, no fluid is injected in the targeted area.

For ‘wet liposuction’, the surgeon injects only a small amount of fluid, about six to eight ounces and usually contains small amounts of ephinephrine. The ‘super wet’ technique evolved because doctors found that the more fluid they injected up to a point, the less blood was lost.

In the tumescent technique, doctors inject up to five times as much fluid as aspirate. Since the injected fluid contains large amounts of lidocaine, tumescent liposuction is generally performed with only a local anesthetic.