As the exposure to social media has increased, there is an obsession to look good amongst people of all age groups. Those who are overweight look for shortcuts to achieve speedy and effective results. After all, who has the patience and determination to diet and exercise for months when a plastic surgery can bring instant results! Yes, the procedure called liposuction has revolutionized the concept of body contouring with the miraculous results it brings.  Let’s understand the procedure in detail.

All About Liposuction

Liposuction is a special kind of plastic surgery which involves the removal of extra fat from the body. It is a location-specific procedure, which covers specific body parts such as abdomen, thighs, hips, buttocks, neck, back or arms. It is used as an alternative to natural weight loss measures such as dieting and exercise. Patients opting for Atlanta plastic surgery need to understand the procedure as well as its implications before going ahead with the surgery.

Liposuction is done under anesthesia to ensure that the patient does not experience pain during the surgery. However, recovery from the surgery can be painful and needs to be treated with pain-relieving medications. Other symptoms such as swelling, soreness, numbness, and bruising may also be experienced. The recovery time depends upon the body parts that are operated. The patient may need to stay in the hospital for a major surgery while minor ones may be done as an outpatient procedure.

Understanding the risks and side effects of Liposuction

Being a surgical procedure, liposuction is associated with a number of risks and side effects. A patient must be clearly educated about these before the surgery. In fact, it is the patient’s right to ask the surgeon about all the possible implications. The risks involved in the procedure are multiple and can crop up during various phases of treatment. For instance, the patient may come across anesthesia complications, injuries to internal organs, nerve damage, shock and even, death during the surgery.

The post-surgical risks include accumulation of fluids in the lungs, the formation of blood clots in the lungs, infections, edema (swelling), hematoma (bleeding under the skin) and seroma (leakage of fluid under the skin). In more severe cases, the patient may encounter grave complications in the vital organs such as heart and kidneys, and sometimes, death. Besides these, there are some less serious implications during the recovery period. These include localized pain, soreness, bruising and numbness, sometimes accompanied by an abnormality in the body contours. Scarring and formation of bumps may also be visible. Some people may suffer from infections and slow healing.

Liposuction: Safe or Not

Considering the risks related to liposuction, it becomes important to consider them seriously before actually going ahead. Also, the patient should try to know more about the potential long-term side effects of the procedure. Though liposuction removes fat deposits permanently from a specific body area, the fat may still return if the patient gains weight. To make things worse, the fact that returns are less likely to be visceral. It can get deposited deeper under the skin, even around the vital organs such as heart and liver.  In this way, the long-term impact of liposuction in some patients may be life-threatening.

The Takeaway

Even though liposuction is associated with serious risks, the success rate of the surgery is considerably high. A very small proportion of the patients are likely to experience the serious implications of the surgery. Still, the patient must carefully consider the pros and cons of the treatment. An expert surgeon should be consulted so that he can come up with a treatment plan that is tailored according to the medical history and current health condition of the patient.