Liposuction Evolves… But Still Has Limitations

LiposculptureLiposuction is one of the top plastic surgery procedures. In fact, just yesterday the American Society of Plastic Surgery came out with their 2013 annual statistical survey  (http://www.plasticsurgery.org/news/plastic-surgery-statistics/2013.html) results rating Liposuction the 3rd most popular cosmetic surgical procedure in the United States. Technology assisting liposuction has steadily improved the last decade. Liposuction by itself is referred to as a “minimally invasive” surgery. With just a small incision, a lot can be accomplished. Liposuction can often provide very substantial improvement, however, liposuction is not for everybody. This is the  stuff we talk about on my podcast Liposculpture Talk where  I Interview the best minds in liposuction each week.

Not For Weight Loss

This is that time of year where we’re taking out our swimsuits and heading for the beach, and are more conscious of our figure. So will liposuction help you work off problem areas and get some fairly quick results?

Yes. Liposuction will give you fairly quick results.

However, liposuction is not a weight loss procedure and it should never be looked at as a weight loss procedure. Liposuction is an appropriate procedure to do for those problem areas—those little bulges that don’t go away even when you’re at close to your appropriate body weight. Thats why we call the procedure as “Liposculpting” as opposed to big reduction. Because if you do a reduction in an area that’s always a little bit bulky, you’ll be more smooth and you’ll gain weight less preferentially in that area.

So how much fat should be removed?

The amount of fat you should remove is a very controversial subject. If you take too much, it can actually be very harmful to you. So it’s a judgment call, and I find a lot of physicians feel differently about it. But basically it’s understood it’s safe to sculpt little areas. If you have liposuction and you take out a large volume of fat and you’re still taking in more calories than you’re burning, you’re going to store fat elsewhere in your body. And that might be in places that might be more dangerous to your health, like inside the abdomen or around your heart—these other places where you don’t generally gain weight, but where you will as alternate fat stores.
So just to be clear… when fat accumulates around the heart, which is anywhere in the midsection, it can be hard on the heart and you are pre-disposed to getting a heart attack. So is liposuction an answer?
No. In fact it can be one of the causes of preferential storage of fat in this area.
What we’re talking about is increased risk for vascular disease, like heart disease and stroke and things like that, when you have a higher concentration of fat inside your body cavity. So inside the abdomen, as opposed to that fat that is outside the belly wall but underneath the skin, is the area that we treat with liposuction. So again, if you have liposuction of large, superficial areas and you still are taking in more calories than you’re burning, your body is going to store it in the areas where there’s still fat left, which could be inside your abdomen.

So liposuction, is not permission to indulge in large quantities of Twinkees and HoHos. Sorry to break the bad news to you.

Okay, how about the results? I mean, are they permanent or do you have to keep doing this? What liposuction does is reduce the number of fat cells in the problem area. When we gain weight, we don’t make more fat cells; the cells we already have become larger as they store more fat. So what we’re doing is a permanent reduction of the number of fat cells in the problem area so that as you gain weight, it will be gained more evenly—not always preferentially in this area. And each one of us is programmed a little differently that we have our trouble spots.By in large, men maybe gain weight around the middle and women—in the hips, until they get menopause. And then when menopause happens, weight gain patterns change, too.So the estrogen, or lack thereof, distributes the weight differently.

Technology Evolves

Basically there is all sorts of new technology to try to make things both easier for the surgeon and to make skin tighten up afterwards, and so we’ve seen ultrasonic liposuction and now we have the new laser lipo of various sorts which are being very heavily marketed to the public.These new  technologies have proven to make it easier not only for the physician but also for the patient and healing and in procession.

Here’s a question we often get on my show:

What is the difference between traditional liposuction and laser lipo?
The difference becomes whether or not you’re delivering an additional energy besides just the force of the surgeons hands doing the liposuction. So with laser lipo basically delivers energy to dissolve the fat that also heats the skin from underneath so that you may stimulate more collagen production in the skin, and therefore tightening up the skin. And, you know, there is some question that doing laser lipo or ultrasonic lipo, which is the previous iteration, that you’re getting less blood loss and less bruising because you’re disrupting just the fat and not the vessels. There are pros and cons to looking at it that way. And basically, liposuction is still liposuction but the technology has definitely evolved the procedure and made it more suitable to a mass audience now.

Chris Janota is the chief editor of Liposculpture Talk, and the host of the iTunes Liposculpture Talk (http://www.liposculpturetalk.com) Podcast.


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