Liposuction in a month. Should I be concerned about risks involved with general anesthesia? Healthy 33 y/o non smoker / drinker

Thank you for your question; All Surgical procedures have some risks; It is important you choose a board certified plastic surgeon so he can make an evaluation of your particular case and get the preoperative blood work , and other types of evaluation according to your medical history in order to make this risk low. This work a kind of a check list of safety prior to take off on a plane ride.
Good luck!

Based on the information you have provided he seemed to have a normal risk profile for this procedure. Liposuction of the anterior and posterior abdomen and trunk as well as of the arms in a normal BMI patient should. Be a safe procedure that does not involve removal of a dangerous amount of fat. Some surgeons, like myself, are able to perform liposuction procedures under local anesthesia in the office, but the vast majority of these procedures were done under general anesthesia in a very safe.

Thank you for posting your question. All surgical procedures involve some risks, regardless of using general anesthesia or not. I believe it is more important to be mindful in choosing your surgeon and his team, making sure they are board certified and have a good safety record.

General anesthesia is not always necessary but it is also not a problem, it is a tool we have at our disposal. Generally speaking it is used to make the procedure safer. During 360 liposuction for example, liposuction is performed on the back. This is usually done with patients laying their tummy.
So, when patients are sedated and laying on their tummy for an extended period of time, it might be easier and therefore safer to take care of the patient’s airways with general anesthesia.
This means that if the anesthesia department considers general anesthesia as a better option, I feel there is no need to be afraid of it.

Best of luck,
Dr. Miguel Mota

It is a standard to do liposuction of torso (360) in general anesthesia. Considering that you already had that type of anesthesia for breast surgery, I do not expect more risks with this one. Confirm this with your surgeon and anethesiologyst. Good luck.

Dear amber050,
every plastic surgeon has his own preoperative protocol which he recommends to his patients. I would suggest you to discuss this with your plastic surgeon.
Daniel Barrett, MD
Certified, American Board of Plastic Surgery
Member, American Society of Plastic Surgery
Member, American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery

Thank you for your question. All surgical procedure have risk involve, what I would suggest to be treated by board certified plastic surgeon with experience in this procedure, to get the best desired results.

Respectfully,
Dr. Emmanuel Mallol Cotes.-

From your description you are a good candidate for surgery with low risk. It is normal to be nervous about anesthesia but a healthy person undergoing liposuction by a board certified plastic surgeon would have a low risk of complications. I encourage you to speak with your surgeon about your concerns. It's important that you are comfortable and confident as you prepare for surgery.

Liposuction is one of the safest surgeries that plastic surgeons do. General anesthesia is also very safe and much easier to tolerate now with better drugs. You had a more invasive procedure and did well. Hopefully, you will do just as well this time.

Of all the risks of having a liposuction anesthesia should be very low on the list.
People often have anxiety relating anesthesia particularly not waking up. having general anesthesia today is one of the safest things you can have done. statistically the fatality for simply having general anesthesia is approximately one in 200,000.
To put this in perspective average fatality for an average driver simply just from driving is one and 10,000 per year. if you were to compare then the risk of dying from general anesthesia is about as high as dying from an average person driving an automobile for 1.5 days.
With patients should be concerned about is having chosen as efficiently talented and experience surgeon. Delivering consistent quality Liposuction results is far more difficult than most people believe. Liposuction is more variation and outcomes based on who does the procedure than any other operation I’ve ever seen.
Simply choosing a board-certified plastic surgeon with overall good reputation is insufficient to confirm that this person has mastered liposuction.
Considering that Liposuction is a permanent and irreversible procedure the importance of getting this right the first time cannot be overstated.
Well prepared patients should have gone through a vetting process comparing results, experience and overall competence and ethical standards of multiple plastic surgeons before committing to having surgery.
I recommend patient status exclusively by having multiple in person consultations with local board-certified plastic surgeons.
Avoid virtual consultations whenever possible.
During each consultation bring with you pictures of your own torso or whatever area you’re having treated with pictures taken similar to have plastic surgeons take before and after pictures.
Used pictures of yourself for comparison.
Ask each provider to open up their portfolio and show you their entire collection of before and after pictures.
Providers may be hesitant to do this but only being shown a set of preselected pictures which most likely represent the best results of the providers career is totally insufficient to get a clear understanding of what the average results look like in the hands of each provider or how many of these procedures that surgeon has actually performed.
Patients are hiring surgeons and vetting the surgeon by asking to see a full representation of the history of their work is fair game.
An experienced surgeon should have no difficulty showing you at least 50 sets of before and after pictures highly experienced surges will have hundreds or even thousands.
Ask the provider to show as many pictures as possible of patients with similar body characteristics to your own. This includes variables like skin laxity, muscle separation from previous pregnancies, age, visceral fat etc. etc.
There are a number of variables that limit who is going to get good results from Liposuction. It’s very important to know if you’re a good candidate, a bad candidate or an average candidate.
A poor candidate is never going to get great liposuction results regardless of who does the procedure.
That said, an excellent candidate can be left disfigured by choosing a provider who lacks skill and experience. Ones done the results cannot be reversed.
When reviewing pictures ask each surgeon to show you examples of excellent results, average results and results that didn’t turn out as good as they had hoped for it. we all have a variety of outcomes and it’s fair game for patients to ask to see different outcomes from each surgeon.
This is why it’s so important for patients to make sure they see as many pictures as possible.
Become well familiarized with what quality liposuction results look like.
Do that by simply looking at hundreds of before and after pictures looking really closely at what the patient looked like in the before pictures while comparing pictures of your own body making sure they look as similar as possible.
For Liposuction you cannot compare results among people who had different levels of candidacy for quality outcomes.
You should also ask the surgeon what the revision rates are and what their policy is for revision surgery.
It’s worth asking if they’re willing to show you pictures of patient who underwent revision surgery as well.
Come up with a grading or rating system of quality results for each area you’re considering having treated. These may include evidence of skin contour irregularities or simply how good the abdomen looks, love handles, waist, back etc.
During each consultation make written notes about how many before and after pictures each surgeon showed you and what the quality of results were. You may want to make specific notes about how many pictures the surgeon was able to find of patients who had really similar body characteristics to her own. having a set of printed pictures of your torso taken like plastic surgeons do can be really helpful during the consultation process.
It’s very important to be clear about exactly what areas are going to be included and not included with the Liposuction and review each and every area you’re paying for on before and after pictures.
In regards to the Abdomen which is the most common area to get liposuction I view the torso as a single anatomic unit and generally try to treat the entire tour so if doing Liposuction. By not leaving certain parts of the tour so untreated patients will have a natural thin even a fat distribution without evidence of having had a previous liposuction. Leaving any part of the torso untreated does not leave a natural fat distribution and is sub optimal.
Continue having consultations until you feel very comfortable you found the most talented and experienced provider.
Surgeons who are detail oriented will be detail oriented in all aspects of their work and this includes consultations and postoperative visits.
Check how much time each surgeon spent with you during the consultation and make a note if they discussed preparation, recovery discussed risk, reviewed your medical history and thoroughly explained what you can expect and how consistent the surgeon was and being able to predict exactly what your results will look like.
Surgeons who have mastered this procedure don’t need to guess who’s going to get a good outcome. Results are highly predictable in the hands of a sufficiently skilled and experience surgeon.
For that type of surgeon the only variable is the candidacy of the patient and people typically do not understand themselves if they’re a good candidate or not.
I sometimes describe the ideal candidate for Liposuction as somebody who is young tight and pudgy.
The opposite is also true. Other people, women with pregnancy related changes, skin laxity or the absence of sufficient amounts of subcutaneous fat are generally characteristics that lead to lesser results.
Finally I recommend reading all reviews and various physician review websites avoiding providers with a significant number of justified negative reviews. The absence of justified negative reviews is more important and more telling then having an abundance of positive reviews.
Excessive number of reviews tend to indicate review manipulation. whether this is appropriate or not providers who have the greatest number of reviews are generally encouraging a lot of people to promote their practice.
I don’t know how many consultations patients should schedule because it depends on how well they preselect for surgeons who are skilled at this procedure.
Starting with five consultations is probably a pretty good place and then simply keep scheduling more until you feel like you’ve absolutely found the one surgeon who gets liposuction and has a collection of before and after pictures that reads like a telephone book.
It’s nice to have a pleasant doctor with a good bedside manner but in the end what you’re looking for is experience and competence demonstrated by the greatest collection of before and after pictures with honest principles being willing to show you truthful real results and setting expectations accurately.
Being disappointed or hurt including regretting having ever considered liposuction is by far the greatest risk and is what patients should be concerned about.
Delivering quality liposuction results is far more difficult than most people believe.
Most plastic surgeons think they’re much better at Liposuction and they actually are.
There is a substantial number of people who lack proper training offering Liposuction. Insist exclusively on board-certified plastic surgeons.
Within the group make sure they have the skill and experience.
I’ve been a board-certified plastic surgeon for 22 years. The last 12 years of practice were devoted exclusively to doing only liposuction and fat transfer procedures. i’ve done over 8000 liposuction procedures to date.
I speak from experience and my goal in life is to prevent people from being disfigured through inappropriate liposuction done by providers her lack skill and experience.
Unfortunately this happens far too often and the consequences are devastating.
As long as patients go through the proper steps of vetting plastic surgeons the chance of a negative outcome should be minimal.
It is the one single aspect of the experience patients have full control over and they should take that power and run with it. Properly vetting plastic surgeons is time consuming and cannot be rushed.
Good luck,
Mats Hagstrom MD

Hi. Given that you didn't have any reaction to anesthesia before, I wouldn't be concerned about anesthesia.