The promises of a brand-new you might be alluring, but before having cosmetic surgery, it’s crucial to weigh the advantages and disadvantages.
When it comes to body contouring and toning specifically—not weight loss—liposuction is the most popular and most beneficial surgical procedure, and it has the ability to dramatically alter the life of the appropriate patient if they are candidates for the procedure.
But not everyone is a good candidate for it, and it does come with a few drawbacks.
These are important drawbacks to liposuction that you should be aware of, as well as a few reasons why others like you say they wished they had done it even sooner.
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What is liposuction?
Liposuction is a procedure that helps to reduce fat in various treatment areas, including the lower body, legs, abdomen, upper arms, thighs and flanks.
While some patients have the treatment done for medical reasons, it is most commonly done to target areas of stubborn fat that haven’t responded to dieting and exercise.
But don’t worry, although you do want to ensure you are in good overall health before doing this or any other plastic surgery procedure, your doctor won’t ask for evidence that you’ve tried special diets or intense exercise before agreeing to do your lipo.
There are many methods, including tumescent liposuction, ultrasonic liposuction, SmartLipo, and laser liposuction available for patients.
In most surgeries, two tiny incisions (or more, if more treatment areas are being addressed) are made to begin a regular treatment, usually in a location that is well-hidden.
It is done by inserting a cannula into the exposed and open space. This device, which resembles a rod, breaks up and removes fat from the body through suction. In order to lessen discomfort and speed up healing, the surgeon will next inject a specific fluid containing epinephrine and an anesthetic.
The kind of treatment and the quantity of fat removed will determine how quickly you recover from your surgery. But it’s important to remember that liposuction is a cosmetic surgery used to enhance or mold the body into a more appealing form rather than as a weight reduction method.
Pros of liposuction
Liposuction is one of the most popularly performed plastic surgery procedures in the world since it has so many benefits. In 2020, more than 269,000 liposuction procedures were done by patients in the U.S., The Aesthetic Society reports.
The following are some of the most desirable pros and benefits of the procedure:
Reduction of Fat
With liposuction, fat in regions that normally build in obstinate places is efficiently reduced. Although these locations cannot be “spot treated” with diet and exercise, liposuction provides you the ability to reduce problematic pockets of fat in places like the:
- Abdomen
- Hips
- Thighs
- Back
- Arms
It is important to remember that liposuction is a cosmetic enhancement to a healthy lifestyle rather than a replacement for weight loss.
Muscle tone disclosure
No matter how hard they work at the gym, many individuals discover that the muscles they develop are hidden under a layer of resistant fat. By eliminating excess fat, liposuction reveals hard-earned abs, toned biceps, and other defined regions.
Rapid recovery time
This procedure does not need a substantial amount of recovery time or downtime once it has been performed. After taking a break of about a week from their jobs and other commitments, the majority of people are able to go back to their usual routines.
Various treatment options
With liposuction, you may treat many regions at once for a completely tailored outcome. For a complete physical transformation, you may also combine liposuction with other body-contouring or breast-enhancement operations.
Get that elusive thigh-gap
For some patients, the “thigh gap” is a much-desired aspect of a beautiful body, but it can be fairly difficult, if not impossible, to earn through exercise and dieting.
Liposuction is the most common and most effective surgical treatment used to contour the legs and calves, and for reshaping and recontouring the inner thighs and hip dips.
If any surgical procedure can help make that thigh-gap yours right in time for warm beachy weather, a wedding, or what have you, it’s liposuction.
While not all patients will be able to get a thigh gap through liposuction surgery, many will, and for those who do, the results are permanent, Texas plastic surgeon Courtney El-Zokm, tells NewBeauty magazine.
The thigh gap, if possible, “can be easily done in the office and can also be combined with liposuction in other areas of the body,” the surgeon says.
Cons of Liposuction
Although liposuction has numerous advantages, you should be aware of certain restrictions and disadvantages.
Operative risks
Any surgical procedure has some risk of complications, including those linked to infection, bruising, and anesthesia. By ensuring that your treatment is carried out by a board-certified plastic surgeon, you may significantly reduce these risks.
Need for more than one treatment
There is a limit to liposuction and the total amount of fat that can be removed in one surgical session of the procedure. And you might consider that both a pro and a con—on the plus side, you can get liposuction over and over, almost as many times as you’d like to in order to target and treat each of the problem areas you’d like to change.
But on the downside, yes, there is a limit to how much fat you can take away in any one treatment and so more than one surgery might be needed to address your whole body.
Generally speaking, you can treat the entirety of an area in a single treatment session.
For instance, you would likely not need more than one lipo treatment to target your thighs, or your abdomen, or your upper arms—but you would need more than one if you wanted to treat all of these areas at once.
Though this varies from patient to patient, it tends to work out that way because if your BMI is low enough to get liposuction in the first place, you are probably well set up to tackle at least the entirety of one problem area per surgery. (Since if you had so much excess fatty tissue that it couldn’t be removed in one surgery, your BMI would likely be too high that it disqualifies you from lipo for safety reasons.)
Lack of skin tightening
You’ll need healthy skin elasticity to get the optimum outcomes from liposuction since it doesn’t treat slack skin. You may benefit from combining your operation with a tummy tuck for a flatter, tighter outcome if you have severe skin laxity on your abdomen.
Prolonged effects
To maintain your appearance over the long term, you’ll need to make a commitment to a healthy lifestyle. Future weight gain is still a possibility and might harm your results. Fortunately, a lot of individuals discover that investing in their bodies with liposuction motivates them to keep exercising and caring for their new figures.
Postoperative swelling
After surgery, some degree of edema is typical. The swelling may go down in 3 to 6 months, after which your full effects will become visible. That said, you will still need to live with the swelling during that recovery time.
In spite of the fact that the vast majority of patients will continue to get liposuction for their own benefit, it is essential to be aware of any potential risks associated with the procedure in order to be as well-prepared as possible. If you’re prepared for your surgery, you will have a pleasant and positive experience overall.
