I am 3 weeks post lipo. I have intense lower back pain at night. So severe that I have not slept in 3 weeks. When will it end?

After three weeks most patients recovering from liposuction have at most modest soreness. There are pain syndromes reported when liposuction was assisted by a laser or ultrasound. Report your symptoms to your surgeon.

As with most aspects of medicine, good care begins with making an accurate diagnosis. In your case, it would be helpful to figure out and understand the root cause. Sometimes patients will develop back pain after having a long general anesthetic. Other times it's simply tissue trauma from the procedure.  The pain can be based on muscular or nerve inflammation. Continue following up with your plastic surgeon and consider getting an evaluation by a pain specialist.Pain management is a specialty often performed by doctors with either anesthesiology or rehabilitation medicine backgrounds. If your back pain does not resolve, then seeing a back specialist would be in order as well. Hopefully this will resolve with time as is almost always the case for postoperative pain and tenderness. Be very careful with the long-term use of opiates or valium-type medications. Best of luck,Mats Hagstrom, M.D.