How does liposuction work?

Clinic Hunter

How does liposuction work?

Liposuction is a cosmetic surgery called outpatient surgery, which is usually performed under general anesthesia. Sometimes, for singular, small body areas, local anaesthesia can be used. Liposuction procedure lasts between 1 and 4 hours. After anaesthesia is applied, a surgeon makes an incision (there are no incision lines, but rather small cuts). A special liposuction cannula is inserted through the cuts – it goes into deep fat layers. The cannula breaks and disintegrates the cells of visceral adipose tissue. Then, the fat extraction is possible – here a surgeon may use various techniques, e.g. ultrasound, laser, water or radio frequency. Finally, the incisions are closed with surgical stitches – there may be removable stitches or dissolvable sutures.

Sometimes, liposuction can be combined with fat transfer procedure. Then, the removed fat cells are collected for fat processing (centrifugation and decanting) so that the pure fat is obtained. The donor area for fat collection is the body part with excessive fat (chosen by the patient), this may be stomach fat, whole abdominal fat, thighs fat, back fat, etc. Then, the fat injection can be made to buttocks (so-called BBL or BBL surgery), breasts (for shaping breasts or breast augmentation – breast augmentation surgery with fat transfer).

After the surgery is finished, patients are moved to the post-op room where they rest for a few more hours. In case of general anaesthesia used for fat extraction surgery, patients spend one night in the clinic.