Liposuction: Info, Prices, Photos, Reviews, Q&A

A good liposuction candidate has several common attributes. First and most importantly, the candidate has realistic expectations for what the surgery can and cannot provide.

The candidate realizes that liposuction is not a weight loss technique but instead is to be used to eliminate hard to remove, localized fat deposits.

The candidate should make a “good faith” effort at trying to lose the weight via proper nutrition and exercise.

After proper nutrition and exercise has failed to eliminate the fat deposits, should liposuction be considered.

An ideal candidate will also be in good health, be a non-smoker, within 25 pounds of their ideal weight, and under the age of 40.

Age is an issue due to the fact that skin can lose its elasticity. Candidates over 40 years old can still have liposuction in , but may not be able to attain the desired tone look of their youth without additional surgery.

Liposuction can be performed on either gender. However, most candidates are women who have liposuction performed on the hips, thighs, and stomach area. Most men have liposuction performed on their flanks (or as they are more commonly known, the “love handles”).

As with any cosmetic surgery procedure, it is crucial that the patient have realistic expectations of what the procedure will produce.

Additionally, it is important for you to contact a liposuction surgeon to gain further insight into having this procedure performed, as they are best situated to advise you.

What Can I Realistically Expect From My Liposuction?

It seems that throughout history people have always been intrigued by unattainable ideals of beauty. The ancient Greeks carved statues to capture the perfect proportions that they never actually experienced in real life.

People today are similarly interested in attaining some form of physical perfection. Unlike the Greeks, though, modern society seems more interested in enhancing the physical body through cosmetic surgery than in statue making.

One of the most popular of these cosmetic surgeries is liposuction (also called lipoplasty and lipectomy).

Last year, nearly 350,000 lipoplasties were performed in America alone. Large as this number is, it actually shows a recession-sparked decrease from the year before: in 2016, there were over 455,000.

Liposuction is a surgical procedure which removes fat from the body. After numbing the area, usually through local anesthesia, a surgeon makes an incision in the skin and inserts a special tube called a cannula. A cannula looks a bit like a surgical needle; it’s skinny and hollow and typically made out of metal.

The cannula, which is hooked up to a vacuum device of some sort, is moved around through the patient’s fatty tissue by the doctor. As it is moved around, it breaks up and vacuums out the excess fat.

Many people, especially in America, wish to use liposuction as a form of weight loss. However, lipectomy works much better at removing and slimming problem areas than at affecting drastic or total body weight loss.

The more body fat a procedure removes, the more traumatic that surgery will be. Similarly, increasing the number of body areas treated during a single liposuction session treats will increase the amount of body trauma.

The ideal liposuction patient is in relatively good health and is within about 25 lbs of their ideal weight.

The ideal patient has lost as much fat as possible through exercise and healthy diet, and has just a few problem areas where exercise-resistant fat has collected.

In these patients, liposuction can help to improve the contours of their body and provide them with a trimmer, more aesthetically appealing body. However, even in these cases, patients should remember that there is no guarantee that their surgery will magically make them fit an unattainable ideal.

While patients often experience significant improvement in their appearance, people who expect the impossible are often disappointed. The happiest liposuction patients are the ones who have realistic expectations.