Liposuction, Awake or Asleep?

     Larger volume liposuction or liposuction of multiple areas performed with general anesthesia I feel allows me to get the best results.  If a patient experiences pain or is uncomfortable, the surgery is made more difficult for the patient and the surgeon alike.  In addition, when or if you are flipped to a prone position (on your stomach), having a secure airway is important.  This is difficult to achieve with sedation and local.  Every plastic surgeon has his or her own thoughts on this issue.

It can be done safely either way.  Usually, we use general anesthesia for the larger lipo cases, and local / IV sedation for the smaller ones.  There are pros and cons for both methods, but the results are comparable, and depend more on the surgeon's skill / proficiency rather than the type of anesthesia.

Both are fine and depend on what your doctor prefers. I do smaller cases awake and larger cases asleep. I like the vaser system and think it can be done on awake or asleep patients. Good Luck!

Liposuction can safely be performed either with general anesthesia (totally asleep) or with local anesthesia and sedation (not totally asleep).  When large volumes or many areas of liposuction are to be performed, I find that it is more comfortable and safer to have my patients asleep. 

I personally do not find it helpful for patients to stand during the procedure.  If I feel that I need the patient to sit for any reason to look at the areas, this can easily be accomplished while the patient is asleep using the specialized operating room tables available in our operating room.

 

Best of luck with your surgery.

The length of time doing the procedure for five areas; if these are true areas and not those called areas by some offices, would require that the procedure would be better done with intravenous sedation or a general anesthetic in my office. It is too long under just tumescent. I hear about complaints from patients from offices that do this regarding the very uncomfortable nature of these. There are also risks or lidocaine toxicity due to the need to use a more highly concentrated and and a lot of tumescent local in that many areas. The issue of surgeon fatigue is a factor too and deeper anesthetic techniques allow for a more efficient and thorough result. A skilled and experienced surgeon does not need to have you stand up for this.