Liposuction, Albany, NY - Deluca Plastic Surgery

4 Surgeries With Quick Recoveries

One in five people seek out professional plastic surgery, particularly as they approach middle-age. Modern plastic surgical techniques, attention to detail, and meticulous follow-up allow the surgeons of DeLuca Plastic Surgery to offer patients a quick recovery from surgeries such as liposuction, breast augmentation, mini facelift, and rhinoplasty. A quick recovery with minimal bruising and swelling allows patients to get back to work and play faster.

Picture it. You wake up, head to the operating room, and are pampered by the operating room staff as you drift off to sleep. Only a few hours later you are back at home in your own bed watching Netflix. Minimal discomfort. Excited by the changes that have occurred. Yes. This is the new reality. There are a host of amazing options today. With advanced tools and technologies, a plastic surgeon can help shape the new you without breaking the budget. Consider these four fabulous surgeries to jumpstart the season…

Rhinoplasty

Need a nose adjustment? Rhinoplasty surgery—getting your nose reshaped—could be just what the doctor ordered. Rhinoplasty surgery is tailored to your individual needs – from total nose reshaping to a small hump removal. Post-operative recovery involves soreness and some mild bruising, however, in a week, you can be back in your office, tending to business as usual. And the clincher? A whopping 80-90% of your bruising and swelling with disappear within the first week! Total healing takes longer but, those are changes often only noticed by you (or you close friends). Remarkably, a great majority of patients have relatively mild pain. Exercise can be resumed after 2 weeks.

Read: “Rhinoplasty Basics”

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Nothing But Neck – Kybella vs. Liposuction To Treat Neck Fat

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Click here to contact Dr. Tauber to make an appointment for a free cosmetic consultation today!

Fullness of the neck due to excess neck fat can be treated with both invasive and non-invasive strategies. Reduction of this fat can give better definition to the jaw like and neck and make patients look younger and more fit.

Kybella

Kybella is a non-invasive injection that has been recently approved by the FDA to help improve the appearance of fullness associated with the submental fat of the neck in adults. Young adults, with a moderate amount of excess fat and good skin tone are usually good candidates.

During a office based Kybella treatment, the neck is first cleaned and numbed with topical lidocaine. A pattern is drawn on the neck and the product is injected into the fat of the central neck – dissolving the fat. The body then absorbs the fat over several weeks. There is swelling that occurs and may be bruising and some numbness in the area during this time. The injections are usually done once every six weeks and it usually it usually takes at least two treatments to achieve the desired improvement. (more…)


The Skinny on Liposuction

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What is Liposuction?

Liposuction is a body contouring procedure that reduces fat under the skin to address trouble spots throughout the body.

Traditionally liposuction has been used to tweak areas resistant to exercise such as the love handles, the lower abdomen, the neck, and the buttock. Liposuciton is performed through small access incisions hidden in inconspicuous areas. Because of this, the recovery is relatively quick compared to more invasive surgery, and the restrictions after surgery are few.

Unfortunately, however, liposuction does not have the ability to address any excess skin laxity. The overall success of the procedure depends on the skin retracting back after the fat is reduced. The ideal candidates are young patients with good quality, elastic skin. In patients where the skin does not retract, a skin tightening procedure can be performed to address the excess loose skin.

Not sure if you need skin tightening? Check out our blog post: “Do I Really Need A Tummy Tuck?.

Liposuction treatment areas

Can I Use Liposuction To Help Jump-Start My Weight Loss?

An alternative use of liposuction is as a debulking procedure during weight loss to “jump start” the process of slimming down. This procedure results in a modest weight loss and an incremental improvement in contour that helps motivate patients to continue losing weight through dieting and exercise.

Compared to traditional liposuction, debulking liposuction focuses on performing the procedure quickly with large cannulas to get rid of as much fat as possible in as short a time as possible. This change in focus keeps OR and anesthesia time down and, therefore, significantly reduces cost. There is less attention paid to fine contour refinement and, therefore, patients must accept that there may be contour irregularities that may need further tweaking with contour focused liposuction or surgery in the future.

Recovery After Liposuction

As with any surgery, the pain after liposuction is usually worse in the 2-3 days immediately after surgery and tends to improve after that. Management of pain is usually through a combination of narcotic and non-narcotic pain medications taken by mouth, oral medications that lessen muscle spasm, and long acting local anesthetics injected during surgery or infused from a small pump.

Post-operatively, patients who have liposuction of their torso are placed into an specialised compression garment with smoothing foam backing. Patients wear this for the first two week after surgery. At that point, Dr. Tauber then recommends patients transition to a Spanx OnCore Firm Control Open-Bust Bodysuit or a Spanx Power Conceal-Her Medium Control Open-Bust Bodysuit (available on Amazon) for smoothing compression for the next month.

Get more details on the management of swelling and scars in blog post: Post-Operative Care After Plastic Surgery.

The ability to return to work and everyday activities is variable and depends on many factors including the type of work, the pain tolerance of the patient, and the extent of the procedures. Most patients are ready to return to their lives in 2 weeks.


Traditional Versus Smart Liposuction: Get the Facts

Patients who are looking for body contouring options may have heard of a new option that has appeared in the U.S. over the last several years. SmartLipo is a procedure that has gained a lot of buzz, causing patients to ask if this is a viable, and even better, option for them than liposuction. Many plastic surgeons haven’t been as impressed by this new technology for a number of reasons. If you’re considering a body contouring procedure, learn some of the basic facts about both approaches here. And remember, nothing can replace a one-on-one consultation with an experienced plastic surgeon. When it comes to liposuction, Albany residents deserve to be well informed about long-standing fat reduction procedures along with the newest products and services available to them.

liposuction-stomach-abdomen-example-photo-albany-491x327

First, let me tell you more about my stance on fat reduction procedures and what improvements this procedure has seen since 1982, when it was first introduced to the public in the United States. The first major improvement to the process was the addition of a specially designed blend of lidocaine and adrenaline. This liquid acts as an expander in the targeted area, which results in less bleeding and practically eliminates the need for patients to donate blood prior to the procedure. (more…)


Laser Liposuction (SmartLipo) vs Tumescent Liposuction: Neither Truly Tightens Skin

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Close-up Of Person Hands Drawing Perforation Lines On Stomach With Marker

Since Dr. Illouz and Dr. Fournier first brought liposuction to the United States in 1982 – when I was beginning my residency in plastic surgery – there have been only 2 truly game-changing developments in how board certified surgeons approach/perform liposuction:

Suction Assisted “Tumescent” Liposuction (SAL) – First introduced in 1985, the suction-assisted tumescent liposuction technique involves injecting a special ‘tumescent’ solution directly into the subcutaneous fatty layer (which builds up between the skin and muscle layers) that not only makes the entire treatment zone numb, but also acts to constrict surrounding blood vessels so that very little blood loss and trauma to the surrounding tissue, vessels and nerves occurs during the procedure. In surgery, less trauma means less post-operative swelling. Less post-op swelling means less post-op discomfort and a quicker recovery. In most of my liposuction cases, patients are back on their feet the very next day and pain free soon-there-after. The use of local anesthesia in combination with very light general (re: light complete sedation) not only provides a very comfortable experience for my patients but also enables me to be fairly aggressive and very precise while addressing multiple locations which contain large amounts of fatty tissue.

Power-Assisted Liposuction (PAL) – Approved for general use by the FDA in 1998, power-assisted liposuction differs from un-powered suction-assisted liposuction (SAL) through the use of a special canula that vibrates rapidly (like an electronic tooth brush) while being moved through the fatty tissue by the surgeon. Without power, pushing and pulling the canula in the standard forwards and backwards motion through the fatty tissue requires quite a bit more effort and force. With power, the canula becomes like a hot knife through butter as it gently breaks up the fat before suctioning it out. The benefits to the PAL approach have been well documented and include less time under anesthesia, less bruising and swelling, a faster recovery and most importantly, smoother, more precise results.

And that’s it. Everything that’s followed is nothing more than marketing hype..
 

Neither Laser Liposuction (SmartLipo) nor Traditional (SAL) Truly “Tighten” Skin

Laser, sonic, super-sonic, and all the other “latest” liposuction products – SmartLipo™ included – are not game-changers…and if they were, there would be articles in scientific journals by board-certified plastic surgeons demonstrating as much. At best, newer liposuction machines have had an incremental effect on the quality and consistency of results. At worst, they’ve done more harm than good (especially when used outside of their very-specific use-cases). Case in point, I’ve personally taken care of patients whose burns from these “more advanced” technologies required surgery to repair.

Innovation Cartoon by Tom Fishburne
Innovation Life-Cycle. A cartoon by Tom Fishburne

As with most new products, after the initial hype and marketing settles down, the indications for use diminish. When laser liposuction (Coollipo™, Smartlipo™, Slimlipo™) first came on the scene, it was touted as a stand alone procedure. But after it became clear that the initial results were less than ideal, traditional liposuction got added to the procedure in order to achieve satisfactory results. Perhaps, in very limited use-cases (e.g. under the chin) there can be some added skin tightening, but as I have seen over the years, if properly performed on a properly chosen patient, there’s really no better option than traditional, suction-assisted tumescent liposuction.

What Actually Matters Most: The Skill of the Plastic Surgeon

Ultimately however, it remains the skill and talent of the sculptor rather than the make or model of their chisel that determines whether or not one ends up with a superlatively sculpted thigh, hip, neck, buttocks, arm, or abdomen.

When I first began performing liposuctions some 28 years ago (during my 8 years of formal residency/training) a professor told me that nothing can substitute the skill and technique of a master plastic surgeon who has, through years of training and experience, refined his technique to the point where such procedures becomes less about suctioning and more about sculpting. I remember thinking that this was easy enough for him to say given that he had already attained master-level status. But when I reached equivalent status, it became clear that he was right.

Before & after liposuction of the hips and thighs to remove "saddlebags" (2200cc infused and 2100cc removed) - by Dr. DeLuca
Before & after liposuction of the hips and thighs to remove “saddlebags” – Click the above photo to enlarge. Click here to view all 5 photos of this patient.

Much of one’s success depends upon how much pure natural talent, spatial intelligence, and aesthetic ‘taste’ one has. Over time, however, most first-rate plastic surgeons become much more intuitive and feel-driven in their approach to procedures like liposuction. And while the difference in CCs of fatty tissue suctioned out may not be much, the smoothness of shape and consistency of silhouette between the treatment area and surrounding tissue is more often than not, dramatic.


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