Liposuction – effective, safe and durable body sculpting
Liposuction is probably the most frequently performed procedure in cosmetic surgery overall. In our Caribbean plastic surgery clinic at Trinidad Institute of Plastic Surgery we prefer the term liposculpture. Liposuction gives the impression that the procedure is just about removing fat, whereas liposculpture captures the essential point better – the procedure is all about contouring, not weight loss. In fact ideal candidates for liposuction, liposculpture and lipoplasty are not looking for weight loss, but body contouring and contour improvement. More and more often this means give and take – fat grafting is used to augment certain contours and shapes e. g. during a Brazilian butt lift, liposuction to reduce bulges or irregularities in contour elsewhere.
Liposuction – is it for you ?
Liposculpture is for you if you are looking for body contouring, not weight loss. You are close to your normal weight. You are in control of your weight. Specifically, you are able to avoid weight gain after the procedure. Your skin in the areas to be contoured has retained at least some of its elastic properties. Your expectations are realistic and have developed while working with your plastic surgeon in the course of the preoperative consultation process.
The results of liposuction are permanent. Once removed from the body fat cells do not grow back. Those remaining function like normal fat cells however. So when given something to store they will grow, when fat is removed from their stores they will shrink. An analogy are the balloons at the birthday party. Assume there are one hundred around and one takes a needle and pops sixty. Now the forty left and still be deflated and inflated, the sixty gone won’t come back.
Liposuction – no myths, no gimmicks, just results
Body contouring by liposuction sculpts fat, plain and simple. As such the only really important variable outside body and tissue characteristics of the client is the artistic capability of the plastic surgeon. Not all plastic surgeons have equal artistic judgement and talent for sculpting, but practitioners who are not board certified plastic surgeons lack any and are the most sure way to an unsatisfactory result.
The most pervasive myths in liposuction surround the use of technology. The result of liposculpture is determined solely by tissue characteristics and how well the plastic surgeon is able to sculpt the fat. Technology is mostly used to mask the absence of artistic capabilities of the operator. Sculpting is a precision job, which is done manually, just as a sculptor would work on a block of marble. The feedback during the procedure is purely tactile. The mind’s eye of an artist (not a machine operator) then has to correlate sculpting action and tactile feedback with an anticipated visual result some time down the road. Neither laser liposuction nor ultrasonic liposuction nor radiofrequency or waterjets contribute in any way to this process. So why are all these devices then around ? Simple answer – one, to camouflage the artistic ineptitude of those who have to use them and two, to generate unrealistic additional expectations on the client side. No device generates skin retraction beyond what the intrinsic elastic properties of the skin provide, all liposuction procedures below a certain volume of aspirate (we use four liters as a limit) can be performed as outpatient surgery and under tumescent anesthesia / local anesthesia with or without concomitant sedation foregoing a general anaesthetic if the client so desires, the length of recovery is solely determined by the amount of aspirate and number of sites sculpted, bruising and swelling is solely dependent on infiltration technique, precision of sculpting and use of compression foam and garments after the procedure etc. etc. What all these devices do in a sure way is to markedly increase the cost of the procedure !
Is there then any meaningful technology in liposuction ? Yes, just look at the workshop of a sculptor and you will find a limited number of high quality tools, each designed for a specific task just as there are different cannula designs in liposculpture. Some tools are powered just as we use PAL (power assisted liposuction) to speed up the procedure without hampering the essentials of the sculpting process.
Results come from the hand on the cannula and the mind controlling it.
If done for the right reasons (contouring, not weight loss) by some of the best body contouring plastic surgeons in the Caribbean at Trinidad Institute of Plastic Surgery liposuction is a procedure with an extremely high satisfaction rate – for one simple reason: it works !
Trinidad Institute of Plastic Surgery – the superior choice for liposuction in the Caribbean, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Miami, New York, Toronto, London