Don't Neglect Care After Liposuction!
Who is going to care for you after liposuction? If you don’t know what’s involved, ask your plastic surgeon. He will tell you everything you need to know and provide you with all the necessary guidance on how to take care after liposuction. One of the most important things to do to take care after liposuction is using a compression garment. This helps to remove the fluid, which will try to accumulate in response to the tissue trauma that is always a surgery. By wearing a compression garment, a patient is automatically applying pressure on the tunnels that have been made by the cannulae. This assists in keeping the fluids from building up in the tunnels, which in turn helps reduce tendencies for long-lasting swelling. Some people naturally think that applying ice is the way to reduce swelling. Ice is not a good idea for at least seven days after the liposuction. Maybe you will ask yourself why is that? The tiny capillaries and the lymphatic vessels, which normally carry blood and other substances to our fat cells and to other layers of the body, are traumatized by liposuction. Ice further shuts blood vessels down, and can thereby starving the tissues of the skin of oxygen and nutrients. Patients with one relatively uncommon disease are particularly sensitive to the bad effects of ice following liposuction. The disease, which is not commonly tested for during routine blood tests, is called cryoglobulinemia. So, when taking care after liposuction, patients with this disease are advised not to use any ice ever following liposuction. In patients with the disease cryoglobulinemia, little globs of protein that clump up in the blood vessels when it is cold. The little globs of protein, called cryoglobulins, accumulate plugging up the blood vessels and starving the tissues at the end of those blood vessels for air and food. Those tissues die, leaving large scars that could possibly become infected. Unfortunately, ice problems following liposuction in patients who don't know they have cryoglobulinemia has happened many times in the United States. Because this disease is extremely rare, many people may not notice that they have any symptoms especially if they live in the southern or warmer parts of the United States, especially Florida! Also, liposuction is an extremely common procedure. After considering this and an extremely uncommon or hidden event or condition, there can occasionally be a match. The combination of ice, liposuction, and cryoglobulinemia can, however, unfortunately prove disastrous to patients and saddening to their doctors (who, of course, did not intend for this to happen). Tumescent liposuction is safe in patients with cryoglobulinemia, provided that ice is not applied for quite some period of time following the liposuction and that patients have a good warming device used during the liposuction surgery. All the liposuction specialists believe and will also advise you, that when taking care after liposuction, "non-ice period" might be as long as one week or even a month. The answer to this question is currently unknown, and developing a model to test the amount of time required before ice can be applied could be tricky. If you want to know the current information about taking your personal care after liposuction, ask your cosmetic surgeon for help. |
