Liposuction

Under a general anaesthetic, you’ll be injected with adrenaline and a local anaesthetic mix in the fatty area to reduce bleeding and bruising afterwards. A small cut is made and a slim tube (cannula) attached to a vacuum pump is inserted. The tube will be moved around beneath the skin to loosen the fatty deposits while the vacuum pump removes the excess fat.

After surgery, support garments and dressings are worn to control swelling and promote healing.

Your surgeon will examine your body. You are most likely to benefit from liposuction if, after losing a lot of weight, you still have localised deposits of fat that seem out of proportion to the rest of your body. These usually affect areas such as your hips, sides, abdomen or thighs.

Liposuction may also be suitable if you have growths of fat that show as lumps under your skin or differences in shape following a breast reduction or abdominoplasty ('tummy tuck'). For the operation to be successful, your skin should still be elastic (stretchable).

Liposuction is not a substitute for losing weight. If you are overweight, it may be better to lose weight by improving your diet and doing more exercise.

Liposuction can achieve great results in the following areas: thighs, hips, waist, abdomen, buttocks, arms, neck, breasts, chest, and knees.

In chosen patients, liposuction has excellent results and patient satisfaction has been reported as over 98% in the published literature. However, subsequent significant weight gain will reverse the results. Therefore, it is essential for patients to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

In the abdomen, excess fat can readily be removed by liposuction.  However, it will not tighten the skin and if there is already some laxity then this is made worse. Sometimes an abdominoplasty (or tummy tuck) is more suitable.  In most tummy tuck (abdominoplasty) procedures, minor liposuction is used to fine-tune the result.  More extensive liposuction (removing over 500mls of fat) may be required with abdominoplasty surgery although this increases the length of the operation and potential wound healing problems.  Often where there is a large volume of fat, abdominal liposuction and lifestyle modification through diet and exercise is required and may even be the best alternative.

Submental liposuction is usually used as an adjunct to a lower face and neck lift.  When undertaken alone there is a risk of leaving excess skin and it is therefore only appropriate in a younger patient with good skin tone.  In all cases, some fat needs to be left to reduce the risk of skin irregularities, and deep liposuction is avoided to reduce the risk of mandibular nerve palsy.