Liposuction scars are very real risks for any patient. In fact, scarring is an inherent risk with any plastic surgery procedure because the incision makes that area prone to problems such as scarring and infection. The good news is that scars, although unsightly, are not particularly dangerous to a person’s physical health. A scar is an area of the skin where a fibrous material replaces the normal skin after an injury, or in this case, a surgery that causes too much trauma to the skin.
The thicker tissue does not function like the normal skin with all the sweat glands and hair follicles but serve the purpose of closing a wound or opening in the skin that would otherwise be prone to infection. Different liposuction techniques that have been developed recently have improved on traditional methods and reduce the chances of producing visible scars significantly. There are also non-invasive or non-surgical liposuction options available as well that could almost entirely eliminate the risk of scarring.
Scars are caused by damage to the skin. Just about any injury would result in a scar and what people really care about is the visibility of the scar. Minor injuries will scar but to a degree that is not visible. In general terms the deeper the wound, the bigger the scar will be. Liposuction scars could occur from the incision area where the skin does not close up properly resulting in a visible scar. It could also be produced from underneath the skin when the tools used in liposuction are operated too close to the surface of the skin from the underside. This can damage the deeper layers of the skin which could produce a scar.
Although rare, laser liposuction introduces a new risk of scarring that could result from burns. The burning of the skin could occur when the heat generated from the laser is too great and the laser is not moved to a new location. This burn under the skin could produce a scar although this is really rare, very uncommon, and requires near-intentional delinquency from the surgeon. More realistically, laser lipo reduces the risk of scarring since incisions required to perform the surgery are smaller and the precision of the laser technique reduces the amount of harm caused to nearby skin tissue. That is why it is a popular technique used in specialty procedures like breast reduction liposuction where scarring must be avoided as much as possible for best results.
For those who want to avoid liposuction scars there are non-surgical options available. These are only effective for tiny deposits of the fat since only trace amounts of fat can be removed at a time through non-surgical treatments. Some techniques use a needle to inject a chemical solution that causes the fat to melt away. This liquefied fat is picked up and removed from the body by the body’s natural cleansing process. A popular version of this injection technique is Lipodissolve. Another method is known as Thermage, which is the use of a laser to target fat cells and melt them without surgery. It is different from laser lipo which inserts a laser-charged fiber to melt the fat and suction the fat out of the body. Thermage does not suction the fat and only melts trace amounts so that the body can cleanse the melted fat through natural cycles of removing toxins from the body.
Scarring is a very real risk of any surgical procedure and liposuction scars, although rare and usually mild are still possibilities that anyone considering plastic surgery should be aware of. The good news is that any scar can theoretically be removed. A popular treatment is laser skin resurfacing which basically removes a thin layer off the top of your skin revealing the fresh, young skin cells underneath. Multiple sessions will remove enough skin to eliminate some skin problems such as acne and other scars as well as damaged skin cells and wrinkles in the skin.
Related posts: