Liposuction Procedure - Taking A Look At The Liposuction Procedure

Liposuction procedure involves removal of extra fat cells from a specific area of your body. Typically, people choose liposuction procedure to target stubborn fat pockets, which are hard to manage through diet or exercise. Liposuction is possible under local or general anesthesia, depending on the areas targeted and the facilities available in the hospital.

Many liposuction procedures involve the injection of a numbing solution, which will make the targeted area numb even while you remain fully conscious during the liposuction surgery. General anesthesia is required when large amounts of fat are to be removed and it involves either administering of a gas or through a needle injection, which will make sedated during the duration of the operation.

Liposuction procedure is complex like any other surgical intervention and should be done only under the supervision of a well qualified and experienced plastic surgeon in a well equipped hospital.

The first step in any liposuction procedure after administering anesthesia is to create tiny incisions through which the cannula will be inserted into the fat layer of the target area. The surgeon while moving the cannula back and forth, break up the fat cells, with the help of the syringe sucks out the broken fat cells. However during the process, blood and other body fluids might also be removed from the patient. So the patients receive intravenous fluid replacements during and after the procedure.

Once the procedure is over, the doctor might suture the incision or leave it open to reduce the chances of bruising and swelling. There are many types of liposuction procedures including the tumescent liposuction, where a large amount of numbing fluid (a mixture of salt solution, lidocaine, and epinephrine) is administered into the area targeted. Typically the fluid used will be three times that of the fat to be removed. It serves as the local anesthetic apart from preventing body fluid loss, to make the fat removal easy and painless.

Super-wet liposuction uses only less liquid and in this procedure a general anesthetic is used to numb the patient. The ultrasound-assisted liposuction (UAL) ensures more precise results. In this procedure, the fat cells are liquefied using an ultrasonic cannula to remove the fat cells without the traditional suctioning. Power assisted liposuction is another variant of this method where a high-powered cannula that can move back and forth about 5,000 times per minute is used for breaking up the fat cells, which results in less discomfort for the patients as the fat cells are removed without causing disturbance of surrounding tissues.