Local anesthesia or Tumescent anesthesia, in which a patient is awake, I feel has three areas of advantage. To begin with, safety. Studies have shown that local anesthesia is far safer than liposuction under general anesthesia where the patient is completely asleep. One of the main reasons is that liposuction using general anesthesia typically has a higher risk of complications such as clot formation. The second advantage to liposuction under local anesthesia is the local anesthesia prepares the area of fatty tissue to allow for generally more pure fat removal with less bleeding leading to less bruising and less discomfort after the surgery itself in most cases. The third and probably the most important advantage is a better result and that is because liposuction surgery is a contouring and sculpting procedure and one of the only surgeries I can think of where you actually want your patient moving during the surgery to obtain the optimal position so that the muscle is never poked or jabbed or the skin is never poked or jabbed from underneath. Remember that we are using straight instruments on curved areas of the body and it is very difficult when a patient is under general anesthesia and completely asleep to optimize positioning during the contouring procedure itself and I feel that this strongly affects results from the liposuction surgery itself.
No Comments »
