When you stand for a few minutes in front of the mirror and look at the extra layers of fat, you feel sad. Everyone wants to attain a figure or physique like celebrity actors. However, only some can attain the perfect figure. Being fat is not only a matter of poor aesthetic but also gives rise to many health issues.
If your body fat is resistant to all exercises and you have already tried all possible diet charts, but to no avail, you need to look for alternative options to eliminate the unwanted layers of fat tissue. According to medical professionals, liposuction might not be the permanent solution to weight loss, but definitely a procedure to slim down the particular fat areas of the body.
Basic details about liposuction
Liposuction is fundamentally a plastic surgery procedure where the medical professional will remove the fat deposition in your body parts through surgery. It began to get popular since the 1980s. The procedure demands expert handling, for which you need to consult the board-certified plastic surgeons.
The surgery procedure is straightforward and involves making a small incision in a particular area and inserting a tube called a cannula. Then the surgeon will perform suction to remove the excess fat into the special surgical-grade vacuum. You can maintain the impact of the procedure if you can be consistent about maintaining your weight as the process removes the fat cells.
Four types
When you undergo liposuction, you wish to improve the body shape and enhance the overall physical appearance. That is why some of the medical practitioners also call the process body contouring. There are four basic types of processes.
1. Tumescent liposuction: The method is the most common one among the various types of liposuction. The surgeon will inject a considerable quantity of a particular medicated solution into the specific area from where the professional is going to remove the fat tissues. The solution can be three times the volume of fat that the surgeon will eliminate.
The fluid is actually a mixture of lidocaine, an anesthetic, intravenous salt solution, and epinephrine, a drug to trigger blood vessel contraction. While lidocaine will numb the area for the surgery, epinephrine will reduce the blood loss, swelling, and bruising. The IV solution is responsible for easy fat removal, and the surgeon will suck it out too with the fat. The process is comparatively lengthy.
2. Ultrasound-assisted liposuction: Here, the surgeon will use ultrasonic vibration to convert the fat cells into liquid form. Then the doctor will vacuum it out from the body.
• External UAL is a sub-type of the procedure where the treatment happens above the skin surface with the help of a special emitter.
• Internal UAL is just the reverse where the surgeon will use a small and hot cannula below the skin surface.
Overall, the technique will help remove the fat from fibrous and dense areas of the body like your upper back or the enlarged tissue in the breasts of some males. Some professionals apply the technique along with the follow-up procedures, tumescent technique, or better execution. But the time consumption is more than the super-wet type.
3. Super-wet technique: This is very close to the tumescent liposuction process. The main difference is in the use of the quantity of fluid, which is lesser in this case. The surgeon will inject an equal quantity of liquid as the amount of fat you would like to remove. The process is much faster, but it involves sedation or applying general anesthesia.
4. Laser-assisted liposuction: Here, the professional will use laser energy for the liquification of fat cells. The doctor will then use the cannula for vacuuming out the fat, or the surgeon can also allow the liquid to drain out automatically from your body through small tubes. As the cannula will be smaller in this procedure, the surgeons prefer the technique for liposuction from confined areas like your face, jowls, or the chin.
An additional advantage of using the method is energy production from the laser. It usually stimulates collagen formation in the body, which helps prevent the skin sag that sometimes happens as an after-effect of liposuction. Collagen is a fibrous protein present in human body that helps in maintaining a tight skin structure.
Being a good candidate
Before knowing more about the various techniques, it is essential to know whether you are the right candidate for the treatment. To be eligible for undergoing the treatment, you need to be healthy and with the confidence to maintain a stable body weight continuously after the procedure. Weight gain after liposuction will ruin the impact.
Preference for laser ultrasound technique
The surgeons usually recommend laser or ultrasound procedure for some patients. As you already know, the other techniques are quite different from the traditional liposuction process, the main point of difference being the heat generation for helping your skin to contract and tighten right after the procedure.
There is a reason behind the suggestion. If you already have much excess skin, or there will be excess skin even after the procedure, then the heat addition will always allow further fat removal and, of course, skin contraction. So the heat addition will be effective for you when you have considerable layers of fat.
Combining with skin removal
The consultation phase with the doctor is very important as the surgeon will listen to your demands and then check out how much fat removal will be possible. After considering a few basic factors like sex, age, skin elasticity, visible stretch marks on your body and the desired amount of fat that you wish to remove, the surgeon might recommend a combination of liposuction and skin removal for the maximum impact.`
The combined procedure is now quite popular. When the skin stretches over the fat layer, the expanded skin loses elasticity with time. On removing the fat, the extra skin might fail to contract back to re-form the tight skin covering. So removing the excess skin will help in preventing the sagging look.
