How painful is Tumescent Liposuction under general anesthesia?

Tumescent liposuction has an anesthetic in it which helps to minimize pain after surgery. General anesthesia will provide a controlled environment and short term amnesia surrounding the event. the combination will make this a very pleasant experience for you. If pain is controlled during surgery it does not escalate after.
Pain after liposuction varies with the areas being done but most people describe the sensation as soreness like after a vigorous work out.
I maintain a compressive garment with padding for 5 days after the procedure and without padding for 4 weeks after. When you remove fat cells with liposuction you are creating a space between the skin and deep tissue. The body likes to fill spaces with fluid. Maintaining the garment and limiting your activity during the first week is critical.
Talk with your surgeon about your return to work so that you are properly prepared to maintain the improvements you will recieve at surgery.

Good luck

Quite the opposite.  During the procedure it will obviously be more comfortable.  After surgery there should be no more pain than if you had the procedure done under local. If someone is selling you on local based on this claim check to see if they have privileges to do the surgery under general.  I would be willing to bet that they cannot do the procedure under general anesthesia due to lack of privileges or licenses, and are therefore trying to convince you to have surgery using the only technique that is available to them.

Tumescent anesthesia causes little pain and discomfort. The area that liposuction is to be performed on is infiltrated with the tumescent anesthesia prior to the liposuction. This helps accurately remove the fat, greatly reduces blood loss, and increases patient comfort. Best, Dr. Khorasani.

                  It’s
important to realize that significant misinformation seems to permeate this
discussion because of individual agendas. 
It’s safe to say that tumescent liposuction involves infusing fluid into
the subcutaneous tissue.  This
fluid is rich in epinephrine and local anesthetic and offers significant
advantages when performing liposuction. 
Patients have less bleeding and less post-operative pain with this
technique.

                  It’s
also true that Dr. Klein initially described the technique with local
anesthesia alone.  As with
everything else in medicine advances are made and techniques change over the
course of time.  A large number of
surgeons feel that in some cases general anesthesia in combination with tumescent
technique offers significant advantages over local
anesthesia alone.

                  There’s
no question that there’s risk associated with general anesthesia.  It’s also fair to say that there’s risk
associated with just about everything we do as surgeons.  In fact there’s risk associated with
lidocaine toxicity when practitioners are overly exuberant in their efforts to
avoid general anesthesia.

                  It’s
important to be honest when presenting the facts.  The best option for anesthesia varies from patient to
patient and depends on the patient’s aesthetic goals and anatomic
findings.  For some patients
general anesthesia is a good option. 
When this technique is utilized patients actually have less pain during
and after the procedure. 

Since there is very little discomfort at all with tumescent liposuction under local anesthesia and you get better results with faster recovery, why would anyone ever let themselves be talked into general anesthesia with all its risks and problems! Our patients are comfortable, get to watch 3D movies or listen to soothing music and get up and walk out afterwards as if nothing happened except they got a new fabulous body and are back to work in only 2 days and exercising in 1 week. If you trust your doc completely and he/she really really wants to still use general anesthesia, then do it for him but know that there are unnecessary risks with gen. anesthesia you will be taking.  Sincerely,

David Hansen,MD

The pain should be similar in 4-6 hours after the procedure.  Take pain medication and you should be comfortable. Thank you for your question and good luck with everything.

To give the simple answer, there is no pain when surgery is done under genral anesthesia.  You are asleep for the whole procedure and have amnesia of the event.. If tumnescent fluid is placed in your tissues, as it is nearly universally in liposuction cases, some remains after the liposuction is done and that will give you about 2.5 hours of pain relief after you wake up.  Then any discomfort is easily controlled by oral pain medications, iced compresses to the areas treated and compressive garments worn after surgery.  The larger the areas treated the more discomfort there is.  Having said that, if only small areas are to be treated a patient can have a very enjoyable experiance using only some sedation and the tumnescent fluid injected in the areas to be done.  This lowers the cost as no anesthesiologist is required.  Discuss this fully with your plastic surgeon to arrive at what will make your procedure an enjoyable one.

Tumescent liposuction is the instillation of tumescent fluid, (IV fluid, lidocaine, and epinephrine).  The lidocaine decreases pain.  The epinephrine reduces bruising and bleeding.  There is no pain during general anesthesia.  There may be some soreness after the procedure.  This soreness depends on how much liposuction you are doing, and other factors.  It is usually well tolerated.

The whole reason that tumescent liposuction was invented by a dermatologist was to avoid the risks of general anesthesia. Believe me, if you get it done this way you are losing all the good parts of tumescent (less pain, less bruising, less recovery time) and getting all the bad stuff of general anesthesia.
General anesthesia has problems with death rates just from the process, so why in the world would you want to do that when you can have the safest form, tumescent, done by a dermatologist or cosmetic surgeon and get all the benefits. Keep in mind that what you surgeon is referring to as 'tumescent' is a total lie as tumescent, by definition, is done without general anesthesia.
You may want to check out this website to see how Dr. Klein invented this method and why what your surgeon is considering is crazy. Good luck and don't worry about any pain with tumescent. If you go to a good dermatologist, they won't cause you pain and the recovery will be great! Good luck.

There is no pain during the procedure since you are asleep. After the surgery there is some discomfort from the mechanical trauma during the procedure. Most patients complain of a soreness in the areas treated. The discomfort is similar to a tough workout. In my experience, most patients are back to work within a few days. With this technique, there is generally less bruising.