Leg liposuction and lipedema

The body fat is a cellular tissue that: protects the organs, covers articulations, controls the temperature, stores vitamins and is a source of energy for the body.

This fat is in a semi liquid state composed basically of triglycerides. We generate it from an excess of calories that we eat and do not use.

The body is prepared to store what we have in excess in cells called adipocytes. I present them to you: you can see them in the picture below. Notice everything that is in a yellow tone, all of that is the fat that accumulates and the bad news is, there a millions of them in your body (in mine as well.

On top of that they reproduce…unless you eliminate them…and that is the question.

English subtitled video

Fat in our body accumulates in 3 areas:

Subcutaneous fat: If I say love handles, I am sure you understand. It is the fat the accumulates right under the skin and before the muscles, what does not interest us in this case and that it is so noticeable. This type of fat can normally be easily lost with exercise. Attention! it is not the same for everyone. It depends on our genetics and our hormones; the fat can accumulate more in some areas than in other ones. For men it usually accumulates in the stomach and torso, but for women in hips and thighs.

Visceral fat: it is more interiorized in our organism. It is around the organs, which is dangerous if it accumulates in excess. Normally, an excess of visceral fat is preceded of an excess of subcutaneous fat, there is the importance of not growing an excessive protruding stomach or excessive thick legs and thighs. If you do not have love handles, or cellulitis it is unlikely that you have it around the organs.

Intramuscular fat: It is inside the muscles and there is usually not much. As the fat you can see in a “jamón de bellota”. It is totally different than the other types of fat. Obese people have fat in the muscles that can develop to diabetes because they are resistant to insulin. But that is another topic.

To summarize, right now we are talking about how to eliminate the subcutaneous fat, the love handles, fat rolls and cellulitis, which are the ones we are most interested in.

And this is where the magic words starts:
HIGH DEFINITION LIPOSUCTION

We can use the liposuction to eliminate the excessive fat of different areas of the body. These are the different areas that can be treated:  

• Face and neck liposuction
• Chest liposuction (gynecomasty)
• Arm and underam liposuction
• Back and abdomen liposuction
• Feminine and masculine pubic liposuction
• Buttocks liposuction
• Leg liposuction

For any liposuction, a small cut from 3 – 5 millimetres is needed, nothing more. The size will depend on the tube (called a cannula) used for removing the fat. This means if it is for the chest, you will have a cut on each breast. If it is in the arms, there will be one in each arm, if it is in the buttocks one on each buttock, if the area is a bit bigger like the abdomen there will be two cuts, one on each side.

This mark is so small that it ends up being invisible at the end. It is like when a freckle, or wart is removed.

In the example we can see on the right of the picture a small dot from the scar that with time it will practically disappear. It is really small: 3-5 millimetres.

It really does!! And if you do it well, it is definitive.

Let me tell you: If you diet, eat less or practice sport, what you really do is eliminate the accumulated fat in the cells called adipocytes. What you get is, deflate them, they empty out. Just like with balloons. But they are still there waiting for you to overpass yourself and accumulate the extra energy. What we do with a liposuction is to eliminate the fat cells, we remove them from where they were. This means that you will not gain weight again unless you eat excessively, but in a really exaggerated way. If you eat too much but not exaggerated you will gain weight but in other areas of your body, not that one. 

Yes, in fact it is the most usual. Our patients usually do liposuctions of different zones taking advantage of the operating room, anaesthesia, etc.  You can save a lot of money. If you are thinking about it take advantage, you will pay one OR, one anaesthesiologist…

But if we are talking about a big liposuction, we are limited to the number of hours to do it and the quantity of anaesthesia needed. We do not do liposuctions of more than 4 – 5 hours. If that is the case then you would have to do them in different days, but it is less common.

Liposuction is the conventional technique where a small cannula is used to remove fat deposits from certain areas of the body. The lipolaser requires a special fiber optic device that transmits laser energy, this energy produces a destruction of fat. The fat is converted into a liquid emulsion that is left for the body to reabsorb (if the amount is not too large) or can be removed by aspiration through a cannula. Apart from the removal of fat, the laser causes the coagulation of the small vessels of adipose tissue and stimulates the reorganization of collagen in the superficial dermis causing an immediate skin tightening or firming effect.

The results of a liposuction are amazing, people are delighted because the result is INMEDIATE. Your clothes will be big, a pleasure for you. The truth is that the first week after surgery you will not feel very good. From there on it depends on your pain threshold. We recommend for you to be in a calm place, be at home and not go to work. It will be a bad week, but then it will be better. It is as always, once you see the result you forget how bad you felt the first week.

After the first week, recovery gets better. You will still not feel well, but it will be different. From our experience we can say that normally you can go back to work after 10 days. But it really depends on each person and the type of job. It is not the same to work in an office where you can sit and work slower than a more physical job like in construction or be in a store or if you have to carry weight.

At Clinica Sanza Barcelona we are specialists in liposuctions. It is our forte as to say after more than 30 years doing them. This allows us to do big liposuctions as other clinics are not prepared for.

Dr Sanza has taught many plastic surgeons from over the World, his techniques to do these big liposuctions and thanks to him his methodology is done in clinics all over the World.

We can remove from 100 grams to 1 liter of fat from patients that have not much fat and with bigger ones up to 20 liters of fat in one go. Imagine how amazing the result can be. In one go you can see your pant size reduced 6-8 sizes, interesting!!

Do you know what happens? Fat weights much less than the muscle and when you eliminate so many liters the volume reduces is amazing.