Liposuction, as you may have heard in the popular media, is the most commonly performed surgical procedure each year in the United States. Here's a statistic that you may not have heard: the majority of physicians performing liposuction in the United States are not plastic surgeons; in fact, many do not have any formal surgical training whatsoever. It seems hard to believe, but many physicians performing liposuction have had no more training in liposuction than a 'weekend course'. One way to determine whether or not a physician has had appropriate training in a particular surgery is to confirm that they have hospital privileges for that procedure.
I fear that some practitioners view liposuction as a 'simple' surgery, since it does not involve making large incisions, and it requires little, if any, suturing. Nothing could be further from the truth. Liposuction, in my mind, is a very challenging operation that requires careful planning and preparation, and a great deal of care and finesse when it is actually performed. It requires a three-dimensional understanding of the layers of human anatomy, an understanding that is second nature to a surgeon alone. I think that it is often an inadequate understanding of anatomy (and, perhaps, of the body's response to surgery) which leads to the poor results in liposuction and body contouring that unfortunately are so often seen.
It is important that your physician has hospital priveleges for the procedure you are interested in having performed. A hospital has access to information and records that the general public does not. Hospitals also have tremendous exposure to liability for cosmetic surgery procedures performed within them. They therefore will only grant surgical privileges to physicians that can demonstrate appropriate training and experience.
Although many aesthetic cosmetic surgery procedures are not performed in hospital operating rooms, the fact that a hospital has granted a surgeon privileges for a given procedure ensures that the surgeon has met an accepted standard of competence. It also means that your surgeon will be able to take care of you at a hospital should any complications from cosmetic surgery arise.
If you are planning to have cosmetic surgery performed, you should do your due diligence to determine if your surgeon has the appropriate credentials. This issue can be settled by the following simple question: Does my surgeon have hospital privileges to perform my cosmetic surgery?
