Exparel for lipo 360 pain?

There are a few reasons this medication is not used in conjunction with Liposuction.
First is that Liposuction recovery is not that painful.
Patients are sore with a type of muscle soreness often describes as having done excessive exercise.
Surgeon who inject a sufficient amount of lidocaine based numbing solution which stays on board for 24 hours will have patients who are relatively comfortable. This typically helps during the most uncomfortable part of the recovery.
This is especially true when the procedure is done with patients awake in which case it’s essential that local anesthesia be injected meticulously.
Recovery when the procedure is done under general anesthesia is therefore potentially more painful at least during the first 24 hours.
Often very high doses of lidocaine are used during the procedure and for safety reasons adding more local anesthetic even if it’s a different drug may be risky.
You raise a good question, but I believe in the end, it comes down to the procedure not being that difficult to recover from. The procedure itself requiring the using large doses of local anesthetic, and potentially cost and challenges of how to inject the medication which is lipid based.
I suppose you can ask your provider, but I’ve not heard of anyone using this medication for this procedure.
It makes much more sense in surgery where muscle pain is part of the postoperative challenge such as a tummy, tuck or breast augmentation.
Perhaps it’s a solution that has been overlooked but I do see logistic and safety issues making it a potential challenge.
Mats Hagstrom MD