How much fat is in 1l of liposuction?

Posted on March 9, 2011

Índice Show

What is Too Much Liposuction?
Excessive Liposuction is Difficult to Define
Toxic Dose of Liposuction
Small Monthly Doses are Safer
Tumescence for the Wrong Reasons
Ability to Survive Trauma has Limits
Too Many Unrelated Surgical Procedures
Mega-liposuction
Utilitarian Definition of "Too Much Liposuction"
How much does a liter of Lipo fat weigh?
How many Litres of fat can be removed during liposuction?
How much does 2 liters of liposuction weigh?
How much fat do they take out during liposuction?

Quick blog, for all of you no attention span people.

Liposuction is not a weight loss technique. You hear this, but then someone after liposuction drops 2 pant sizes, so you think, “how could they not lose weight?” Liposuction is a body contouring and shaping technique. We do remove fat, which has some weight to it, but it is never as dramatic as you would think.

You should lose some weight. I estimate for every liter of fat removed (not liter of fluid, but of fat) you should lose 2.2 pounds.

You will not see this weight loss immediately. In fact, some people weigh more after surgery than they did before surgery due to swelling.
When I see you at your six week visit, you should have lost some of the weight. If you have not, it means you gained weight during your recovery period (not a hard thing to do since you cannot exercise during this time. So watch what you eat!)
Weight gain is tricky- when I remove 5 liters of fat from your abdomen and love handles, your pattern of where you gain weight changes. If your “fat” test used to be when your jeans are tight you need to cut back, after liposuction, you may gain weight and your jeans still fit you just fine. Your fat pattern changes. So your jeans may be fine, but your arms may have gotten a little larger. Or your chin. Or your breasts. These are signs you are gaining weight.
At 3 months, you should see the full weight loss. It isn’t much, but it is something. So for 5 liters of fat removal, you should lose about 11 pounds. If you weigh the same as you did before surgery, it means you gained 11 pounds during your recovery. You won’t get the results you should have from the surgery.

Liposuction is not a weight loss technique. It is a sculpting procedure. For the best results, have a good eating and exercise regimen firmly in place before surgery. So go hike that Stanford dish!

Factors that increase the dangers of liposuction include 1) lack of good judgment in patient selection, 2) excessive duration and intensity of exposure to anesthesia, 3) excessive amounts of surgical trauma per month, and 4) ineffective post-liposuction care.

What is Too Much Liposuction?

Excessive amounts of surgical trauma can be regarded as toxic to patients. Increasing doses of liposuction-induced surgical trauma produce increasing risks of toxicity in the form of surgical complications. It is not possible to precisely identify the threshold for dangerous amounts of liposuction. However, one can be certain that removing 6 to 9 liters of fat on one day is many times more dangerous than removing 2 to 3 liters of fat on each of three separate surgeries spaced at least one month apart. Liposuction of 5% of the body's subcutaneous surface area is obviously safer than liposuction of 40% of the body surface area. Cosmetic surgery is not emergency surgery, liposuction patients should not be exposed unnecessary risks of excessive liposuction on a single day.

Excessive liposuction is not safe. This patient had too much liposuction on a single day resulting in gross irregularities of the skin. The goal of liposuction should not be to remove the maximum amount of fat, but rather to achieve the best cosmetic results. Mega liposuction is never necessary and often it is dangerous.

Excessive Liposuction is Difficult to Define

Excessive liposuction might be defined as a volume of liposuction that is excessively dangerous. The designation of excessive liposuction often depends on the size and health of the patient. Removing 1 liter (2.2 pounds) of fat by liposuction might be excessive in a patient weighing 50 kg (110 pounds). On the other hand, removing 4 liters (9 pounds) of fat in one procedure might not be excessive in a 100 kg (220 pound) patient. There is no clear cut dividing line between to the amount of liposuction that can be considered safe and an amount of liposuction that is too dangerous. Patients and surgeons must use common sense.

Toxic Dose of Liposuction

Increasing doses of a toxin can be expected to produce increasing risks of a toxic response. Drinking a very small amount of alcohol usually has no detectable effect. Increasing doses of alcohol first produce a mild subjective effect, then mild intoxication (inebriation), followed by moderate intoxication (drunkenness), and dangerous intoxication (unconsciousness, coma, death). The severity of a skin burn can be measured as a percentage of the body-surface area that is burnt. The probability of death increases with increasing percentage of body-surface area that is burnt. Similarly, an increasing amount of liposuction trauma (increasing percentage of body-surface area subjected to liposuction) increases the risk of unconsciousness, coma, and death.

Small Monthly Doses are Safer

Drinking a moderate amount of alcohol on three separate occasions at least a month apart is not as dangerous as drinking three times that amount on one occasion. Similarly doing a moderate amount of liposuction on three separate occasions at least a month apart is not as dangerous as doing three times that amount of liposuction on a single occasion.

Tumescence for the Wrong Reasons

Tumescent liposuction totally by local anesthesia was invented to improve patient safety. However, some surgeons and anesthesiologists use the tumescent technique in order to maximize the volume of fat removed during a single surgery. Liposuction of 5 liters or more of fat in a single liposuction procedure is overly aggressive, and potentially life threatening.

Ability to Survive Trauma has Limits

The body cannot tolerate an unlimited amount of trauma. Increasing degrees of liposuction-associated trauma produce increasing degrees of tissue injury and blood coagulation. Eventually, there is either excessive bleeding or excessive clotting and then death. Excessive liposuction is also associated with prolonged recovery, and disappointing cosmetic results.

Too Many Unrelated Surgical Procedures

The risk of complications is greatly increased by combining liposuction with multiple unrelated surgical procedures such as facelift, breast surgery, nose surgery, or laser surgery. The combination of an intra-abdominal gynecologic surgery and abdominal liposuction is also very dangerous. This risk of complications when a patient has multiple unrelated surgical procedures explains why non-cosmetic surgeries are rarely combined. Because of the fear of complications, surgeons do not expose patients to the risks of simultaneous but unrelated therapeutic surgeries such as gallbladder surgery, hip surgery, and colonoscopy. The risks associated with having multiple cosmetic procedures including liposuction on the same day may often out weigh the benefits of having only one convalescent period. Liposuction is probably the safest of all cosmetic surgery procedures provided that it is not combined with other unrelated surgical procedures.

Mega-liposuction

Mega-liposuction is defined as the liposuction of a huge volume of fat on a single day. The volume of fat that is generally regarded as huge is about 8 liters (two gallons). Because patients have died as a result of mega-liposuction, it cannot be regarded as safe. Even in a hospital setting, mega-liposuction should be regarded as a dangerous experimental procedure. Mega-liposuction is associated with mega-complications. Serial liposuction procedures on separate days are far safer than a single heroic mega-liposuction procedure.

Utilitarian Definition of "Too Much Liposuction"

If nausea, vomiting, excessive pain, bruising and swelling occur regularly after liposuction, then perhaps that surgeon regularly does too much liposuction. If a liposuction surgeon cannot expect all patients to be ambulatory within 30 to 60 minutes after surgery, then perhaps the amount of liposuction and anesthesia are excessive. Liposuction might be excessive if 1) pain regularly confines patients to bed for more than 24 hours, 2) nausea regularly prevents patients from eating a normal meal soon after surgery, or 3) discomfort regularly prevents the return to desk-type work within one to two days after surgery.

By:

lipoadmin.

How much does a liter of Lipo fat weigh?

One liter of fat weighs about 2 pounds. This means that you had about 12 pounds of fat removed (or less if there was a lot of fluid). That is a large amount of fat.

How many Litres of fat can be removed during liposuction?

Currently, American Society of Plastic Surgeons guidelines recommend removing no more than 5 liters, or 11 pounds of lipoaspirate (fat and fluids) during liposuction. Any more than that, and the risk of complications is believed to increase.

How much does 2 liters of liposuction weigh?

For context, 2 liters of fat weighs about 4.4 pounds. Another major consideration for how much fat liposuction can remove is your starting weight. Specifically, for someone who is a size 4 with a weight of 110 pounds, it is more likely that we will remove under 5 pounds of fat.

How much fat do they take out during liposuction?

What Is the Maximum Amount of Fat That Can Be Removed With Liposuction? Generally speaking, the maximum amount of fat that can be removed with liposuction is 5000 ml. That's roughly 11 pounds on the scale. This amount is actually quite significant.