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San Jose 
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 is less invasive than traditional liposuction and does not require anesthesia. If you are interested in liposuction and are wondering if you are a good candidate for tumescent liposuction, please contact us to schedule a consultation with Dr. David Boudreault at our San Jose or Palo Alto plastic surgery office.
1-4 Hours
3-4 Days
1
Outpatient
Awake liposuction is a fast, safer, lower-cost way for you to benefit from liposuction. It is performed by making small incisions and infusing a special solution into the treated area. This solution combines saline with lidocaine, which provides pain relief, and epinephrine, which reduces bleeding/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 & Palo Alto tumescent liposuction does not require general anesthesia. Dr. Boudreault and Nurse Practitioner Molly will employ a variety of techniques to keep you calm and comfortable during your procedure while you are completely awake and in control of your senses. Because the cannula that the doctor uses to remove fat is much smaller than the traditional liposuction cannula, he can make much smaller, barely noticeable incisions. After the incisions, Dr. B will infuse the saline solution and then aspirate the fat. The whole process takes about 1-4 hours.
This is one of the great benefits of opting for awake liposuction. Because the incisions are so small and because no general anesthesia is required, most patients who have an awake liposuction procedure in San Jose or Palo Alto are fully recovered and back to their normal activities in just a few days. This is a sharp contrast to regular 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, just at lower volumes than traditional liposuction. You can use awake liposuction on your double chin and on problem areas like arms, thighs, abdomen and other locations where excess fat is noticeable and unsightly. If you have a large number of problem areas or an extremely high volume of fat in any of these areas, traditional liposuction may be a better option for you. During your consultation for minimally invasive liposuction Palo Alto & San Jose plastic surgeon Dr. Boudreault can go over the benefits of awake vs. 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 should see a difference right away. However, the removal of fat can create an issue with excess skin, which had previously been stretched by that fat. For this reason, we recommend combining awake liposuction with our cold plasma skin tightening procedure Renuvion. This involves us inserting a probe using the same incisions to deliver cold plasma energy which tightens the skin around the area where fat has been aspirated to reduce sag.
The average cost of a Palo Alto & San Jose awake liposuction procedure starts at $6,500. If you decide to add the Renuvion procedure, it can bump the cost to $11,000 on average.
We are happy to make recommendations for spreading out payments over time for your convenience. Many of our patients prefer to use CareCredit or Alphaeon for this purpose. Many of our patients will choose to apply for credit cards with longer terms at 0% interest, so you can enjoy your results soon without the immediate financial burden upfront.
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.
