- Video
- What is Tumescent Liposuction?
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Tumescent liposuction is one of the approaches to liposuction surgery. I break the approaches either in terms of doing it under general anesthesia, where you're completely unconscious, or doing it under tumescent local anesthesia, where you're essentially conscious during the procedure. This is a procedure developed by German surgeons in the mid 1980'. And the word tumes is a verb that means to blow up with fluid. So what you're doing with tumescent liposuction, is you are first putting, or letting the fluid, the tumescent anesthesia, which is mostly saline, sterile water, lidocaine, a diluted version of an epinephrine, to cause basil constriction of the capillaries, and bicarbon to buffer the pH into the fluid first. You're letting it soak in before you do the liposuction. It really is important because it prepares the tissue, hydrodisects the fatty layer before I start doing the liposuction surgery itself. A much more pure fat rule, very little bleeding, much less bruising, you walk out feeling very good. But the most important advantage is that you're able to do it on a conscious patient and have them assume particular positions.
I'm very particular on how I position a patient throughout the entire procedure to very precisely sculpt the area and to not have any irregularities or indentations. This is never really possible under general anesthesia, which has a higher complication rate, more risks, and a lower patient satisfaction rate than the use of purely tumescent local anesthesia.
