Tumescent Liposuction

Dr. Schwartz performs tumescent liposuction as an outpatient procedure.

The advantage of using the tumescent technique is that we can perform liposuction here in the office in a procedure room using IM, which is intramuscular sedation. We give the patient a shot or two in the arm and this makes people happy, relaxed. At this point, we can numb the skin in a few places and inject a dilute solution of anesthetic into the area of fat to be suctioned and it is absolutely painless to put this in since it is buffered, the solution. Once the solution is in, we use a small vibrating cannula instead of the larger cannulas. We find that using smaller cannulas is better for sculpting the area and that the smaller vibrating cannulas serves as a type of massage, it is not the larger violent motion that the arm makes when using the larger cannulas. Patients get up from the table, walk into another room, change their clothes, go home and may have a little discomfort in the week after surgery, but generally, do not have pain of any appreciable amount.