Vaser Liposuction - What Is It All About?

Hi!

I am Dr. Santosh Bhatia and today I shall be talking to you about a procedure called Vaser liposuction. What is liposuction? Liposuction is a procedure wherein we remove unwanted fat from certain areas of the body which in spite of diet and exercise does not reduce. Who is a good candidate for liposuction? A patient who has stubborn fat from certain areas in the body, patients who go to the gym, have a good diet, exercise regimen and in spite of all that cannot reduce their fat; are the ideal candidates for liposuction. Sometimes we get patients who do not like going to gym, who do not like exercising and have stubborn areas of fat, in those patients also liposuction may bring moderate results. Who are not good candidates for liposuction? Generally, women who have a history of multiple pregnancies, with losing abdominal skin, with stretch marks, with losing muscle are not ideal candidates for liposuction. Such patients require a procedure called tummy tuck with or without liposuction. Now, what are the types of liposuction? There is an old school fashioned liposuction which is called as suction liposuction or suction-assisted liposuction. There are other methodologies which are water liposuction, power-assisted liposuction and the most advanced being ultrasonic liposuction or vaser liposuction.

I generally do ultrasonic liposuction or vaser liposuction. What is the advantage of this procedure? Since this procedure emits a very high energy ultrasound energy, the fat gets melted like we are melting butter in microwave and the fat is removed very gently and delicately. So, the chance of bruising and swelling is minimized, the amount of skin contraction that we get because with the help of this ultrasonic energy is also another big advantage that we have seen and we can do high definition liposuctions also that is creating or etching a 6-pack or in women etching a nice abdominal muscle tone. In terms of the other advantage of ultrasonic liposuction, in addition, is that it is known that the amount of bleeding as such doesn't occur but the amount of bleeding is also very very minimal in comparison to any other type of liposuction. My basic technique of doing this is invariably speaking I do something known as 4-D liposuction or high definition liposuction. The many people ask me a question like what is the kind of incisions, what are the kind of cuts, what are the kind of scars that you get in such procedures. Generally the scars are the size of the cannula which is about 3mm and is seen in my hand over here and the scars are so small and inconspicuous and we very smartly try to locate the scars in areas of the body which are hidden in nature, primarily if you have a pre-existing scar we use that scar, in the naval if there is if that's a good location to put that particular scar, if you have stretch marks then I may try to use the stretch mark to use a scar.

So, you try to hide the scar as much as possible and they are hardly 3mm in size in any case. In terms of the post-op care of liposuction generally patients, they come in the morning for surgery and they leave in the evening and I generally do 5 litres of liposuction at any given point of time. In terms of the other post-op care, there is a pressure garment that the patient has to wear which is nothing else but a corset. This corset you have to wear for 24 hours every day for 3 weeks and after 3 weeks optionally speaking it is meant to be worn at least 12 hours a day. This further reduces the chance of swelling and improves and and accelerates the result that we get. In the sense of the liposuction procedure itself, on the morning of surgery, you come nil by mouth or not eating anything 12 hours prior to the surgery and you go home in the evening with 3 medications primarily 1 antibiotic, 1 anti-inflammatory and 1 antacid. So, this is a typical daycare procedure that is done and typically most patients I call them at on day 10 to remove their stitches, I call them on the day on 1 month to evaluate them once, 3 months and six months for your final photograph and that is when we compare our final results.

Now patients also ask me what are the disadvantages of this procedure. The disadvantage primarily being that if you have loose skin, lose muscle then this is this only is not procedure for you; you may have some swelling, you may have some bruising, you may have some irregularity which is most often temporary, you may have asymmetry. Now I often try to point out to patients about their existing asymmetry pre-surgery because everyone is slightly asymmetrical and even post-surgery there is a chance that you may be slightly asymmetrical. In addition to that the risk related to anesthesia is also there. However, we have a very good anaesthetic team; hence we are less worried about such kind of complication. Which are the areas that we can commonly do liposuction? So, liposuction is done in areas like the abdomen, the flank, the back, upper back, lower back, the chest area for men most often, sometimes in women also, the arms, the thighs and the calf.

So technically wherever we have fat, we can liposuc it. So, what the procedure intakes? First, the patient under general anaesthesia is under local anaesthesia after which a small stag incision is made, tumicin fluid which is a cocktail of different fluids are placed inside or underneath the skin. Once we have tumeced the area, I vaser the area with the help of vasering device which melts the fat after which a suction cannula is attached and the fat is aspirated or sucked out. And finally, one must understand that this procedure is not a weight loss procedure, it is a body contouring or body sculpting procedure wherein we may lose a couple of inches however we may not lose a lot of weight.

Thanks