San Jose Morgan Hill Awake liposuction is the common name for a procedure known as tumescent liposuction. Tumescent is a word meaning swollen or firm. Like traditional liposuction, the goal of awake liposuction is to remove unwanted extra fatty tissue from problem areas of the body. What is important to know about tumescent liposuction is that it uses local anesthesia rather than general anesthesia. If you are interested in awake liposuction and are wondering if you are a good candidate, please contact us to schedule a consultation with Dr. David Boudreault at our San Jose or Palo Alto office.
TREATMENT TIME
1–4 Hours
PATIENT DOWNTIME
3–4 Days
TREATMENT SERIES
1
PROCEDURE TYPE
Outpatient
Awake liposuction is performed by making small incisions and infusing a special solution into the treated area. This solution combines saline with lidocaine, which provides local anesthesia, and epinephrine, which reduces bleeding and bruising. Then a cannula is used to perform suction-assisted aspiration on the area to contour the body and remove unwanted fat. Tumescent liposuction is not appropriate for large-volume liposuction. The best candidates for this type of liposuction procedure are healthy individuals who are not obese.
At Illuminate in San Jose and Palo Alto, tumescent liposuction does not require general anesthesia. Dr. Boudreault will employ a variety of techniques to keep you calm and comfortable during your procedure while you are awake and in control of your senses. Because the cannula used to remove fat is much smaller than a traditional liposuction cannula, he can make smaller incisions. After making the incisions, Dr. Boudreault will infuse the saline solution and then aspirate the fat. The whole process takes about 1–4 hours.
This is one of the benefits of opting for awake liposuction. Because the incisions are small and no general anesthesia is required, many patients who have an awake liposuction procedure in San Jose or Palo Alto return to normal activities within a few days. This can be a shorter recovery than asleep liposuction with general anesthesia, which usually has a recovery time of a week or two. If you do not have two weeks to rest and recover from liposuction and you are a good candidate, tumescent liposuction may be the better option.
Like asleep liposuction, awake liposuction treats unwanted fat, but at lower volumes. You can use awake liposuction on your double chin and on problem areas like the arms, thighs, abdomen and other locations where excess fat is noticeable. If you have a large number of problem areas or a high volume of fat in any of these areas, traditional liposuction may be a better option for you. During your consultation for this minimally invasive liposuction approach, Palo Alto and San Jose plastic surgeon Dr. Boudreault can go over the benefits of awake versus asleep liposuction for your particular situation.
Since you will be awake the whole time, you may see some results as they happen. Once the fat is removed, you may see a difference right away, although swelling can affect the initial appearance. The removal of fat can reveal excess skin that had previously been stretched by that fat. For this reason, awake liposuction may be combined with the cold plasma skin-tightening procedure Renuvion when appropriate. This involves inserting a probe through the same incisions to deliver cold plasma energy to the treated area.
Your surgical plan comes first. Once we understand your needs, we determine the best technique for awake liposuction—and because techniques vary in time and complexity, pricing varies along with them. Transparent, personalized pricing is shared during your consultation.
We are happy to make recommendations for spreading out payments over time for your convenience. Many of our patients prefer to use CareCredit for this purpose.
At Illuminate we’re with you during every step of your journey toward greater self-confidence. Schedule a consultation with us today and let Illuminate’s expert team listen to your concerns and guide you through treatments and procedures to help you reach your individual goals. We look forward to seeing you and celebrating your renewed appearance and realized potential.
