General Anesthesia vs. Local for Smart Lipo

  After thousands of liposuctions, I can tell you that you want the surgery done well the first time.  I would always recommend general anesthesia when having multiple areas done as you have suggested.Kenneth Hughes, MDLos Angeles, CA

Local anesthesia is great for a couple of areas but if you want more general is preferred because there is a limit how much local anesthesia can be safely given. You may want to break it up into two separate sessions if you want just local.General anesthesia is safe if you are healthy. Be sure to get clearance from your doctor.  

That is a lot of areas to do under local. Chose a doctor that can offer both options.  Some don't have the privileges to do surgery under general anesthesia so they offer what they have. 

Great question. There are a few issues to be addressed in the basis of your question. 1. SmartLipo has 8 different units available. There are based upon the watts and wave length of energy (joules) to be delivered of the invisible laser beam. The most advanced is the SmartLipo Triplex unit - up to 40 watts with "3" wavelengths of light (1064, 1320, 1440nm). The 1440 nm is by far the most effective based upon medical studies by Dr B DiBernardo, NJ. So you "must" find which doc offers the "TRIPLEX" unit. 2. The # of areas to be treated adds to the used of general vs local due to potential overdosing of local anesthesia. And local for multiple areas adds double the surgery time, thus slightly increasing risks of infection and higher %s of irregular results. PLUS to potential "pain" during the longer operation under local. Here on this RealSelf site of the 6 docs who responded, 5 recommended general anesthesia vs 1 (who BTW was a facial ENT surgeon) recommended local anesthesia. 3. As far as waking up issue, it is far safer to have an anesthesia provider in the procedure than the surgeon alone under local. As the surgeon I "want" to ONLY focus upon the lipo portion not making sure I am hurting you... So in my opinion doing multiple areas needs a general anesthesia.......

Liposuction can be done using general anesthesia or local. It really depends upon the procedure and the patient. Good luck.

To do all those areas would require general anesthesia to do a good job.  It's all about the dose limit of the local anesthesia injected.  If multiple areas are being done under local, the anesthetic in the local tumescent solution has to be diluted too much (otherwise you risk going over the safe limit of anesthetic that the body can handle).  When it is diluted too much, there is not as good of an effect, meaning that it will hurt.  When it hurts, you move around.  When you move around, I have to stop, or avoid certain areas, or inject more local in specific spots, potentially distorting those spots.  Not fun for you or me.  One or two areas are fine under local, but not all the areas you mentioned.  General anesthesia is extremely safe, and anesthesiologists will tell you that it is safer than deep sedation, or the nebulous "twilight" anesthesia.  With general anesthesia the anesthesiologist has control over your airway, while the other methods can risk aspiration, as your sedated airway is unprotected.

We do our cases under a light oral sedation. There really is no need for full general anesthesia. However, in this day and age,. general anesthesia is quite safe.

For all the areas you are having done, General anesthesia is safer option as you have a board certified physician anesthesiologist taking care of you the entire time. I would say of the several hundred liposuction procedures I do yearly, roughly 90% of these patients CHOOSE to have general anesthesia and I'm happy to say we have a perfect safety record!

if you are doing multiple areas at one time local anesthesia is not fun. Most people will use what we call Twilight sleep anesthesia for that type of procedure. You can be as awake or as asleep as you like to be. Look into it. Good luck.