There are many different types of liposuction, but they all achieve the same thing, which is removing fat cells from the body. The traditional technique, the traditional, simple liposuction, is carried out by making a small, 3 mm cut in the skin, by passing a metal tube attached to a vacuum suction machine and as you pass the tube backwards and forwards it sucks the fat cells out. There is a tumescent technique used with this, which means we inject a lot of fluid into the fat, which plumps up the fluid and that makes it easier to extract the fat. So that is simple, basic, traditional liposuction that has been used for the last thirty years. In the last five to ten years several other techniques have evolved and been developed to try and improve the results and the outcome. This includes vaser liposuction. Vaser liposuction is an ultrasound technique to dissolve the fat. With that technique you place a tube within the fat, with an ultrasound probe at the end, and that liquefies the fat using ultrasound signals and then you take that tube out and you put a second tube in and you suck the liquefied fat out. It’s a slightly different technology, that is sought to be very good for the treatment of gynecomastia, it’s also potentially quite good for making skin laxity tighten up, but it’s very user dependant and there’s a bit of a learning curve to getting very good at using it.
The other option on the market at the moment is called smart liposuction, and this is a technique that uses a laser to dissolve the fat cells, and just damage them so that the body then absorbs them. There’s no suction involved, there’s a small tube which is passed through a small hole and is passed backwards and forwards in the fat layer and the laser coming out of the end kills the fat cells, which then disintegrate, and get broken up by the body and get absorbed by the body. There’s no suction process involved, it can be done under local anaesthetic, and it is often the treatment of choice in a lot of local, cosmetic type clinics. Beauty clinics will often offer this kind of treatment. The other procedures that are described, such as vaser and the routine liposuction, require a full general anaesthetic, in most cases, to do the fat suction.
