Understanding Liposuction

With the increase in obesity over the past few years, the options afforded by liposuction have been a saving grace for many people around the world. Where a gastric band can help to reduce the feeling of hunger and as a result, improve weight loss as time progresses; liposuction treatments offer their patients a relatively easy fix by instantly removing excess body weight that can be kept from accumulating again with a healthy diet and workout regime.

But how does lipo actually work and what does it involve? Well as the name would suggest, there is suction involved, although this is less like being vacuumed and more like being pumped of excess fat. Lipo itself refers to the word ‘fat’ so the entire process literally translates to ‘fat sucking’. As strange a term as this may be, it’s actually been proven to be one of the most, if not the most, effective method for removing unwanted body fat.

The beauty of the procedure is that it’s fairly straight forward, with a general anaesthetic being applied to the patient, an incision/s being made in the area suffering with fatty-cell build up, and then a lipo pump being fitted in order to gently ‘suck’ the fat out of the body. Throughout the procedure there are other factors involved – like the amount of fat to be removed, if the fat is touching arteries or organs and so on, but all of this will be accounted for during the procedure by the surgeon.

There are different types of liposuction treatments too, and each will treat an individual body part or limb in need of fat removal. Fat surgeries for example, refer to the majority of fat removals around the body, but more specific procedures include stomach fat removal/ tummy fat surgery (relating to any and all fat around the stomach and abdomen) and thigh liposuction (which relates to any fat removed from the thighs or upper leg area).

As with all intrusive surgeries, the incision made may scar before gradually healing over time, but the amount of time that this scar can take to heal will depend on the individual’s health, the size of the wound and whether any infection was present. In most cases, the scar will look like a straight or slightly curved line (depending on the location of the treatment), and once entirely faded it shouldn’t be noticeable at all.

Once the fat has been removed however, there’s no guarantee that it won’t return again, especially if the same diet and eating regime is continued. A liposuction treatment isn’t always an option in cases where the person continues to eat poorly and doesn’t exercise, mainly due to the potential for tissue damage as newer incisions are made to remove the fat. In most cases, liposuction can remove a decent amount of fat to allow the person to exercise and move more freely, meaning that with good exercise and healthy food they should be able to keep the weight at bay.

Coolsculpting by Silkwood Medical in Sydney, At Silkwood Medical CoolSculpting is one of our favourite non-surgical fat reducing/sculpting machines. In less than 1 hour you can sculpt away those stubborn fatty areas like love handles, muffin top, “tuck shop” arms, tummies, inner and outer thighs,