Complications and Treatment

Liposuction can be fatal under the wrong hands and with doctors with little to no experience and a number of serious complications are known to occur, but the frequency is unknown. The physician should discuss these possible consequences with the patient before the intervention, and adequate after care if complications occur must be provided. Significant irregularities and depressions of the skin are frequently the result of the surgeon's inattention to detail . Skin Necrosis is a rare complication in which the skin falls off in the necrotic area. Full Thickness Skin Necrosis (death of the affected skin) can result from excessive superficial liposuction that injures the vascular supply of the overlying skin. Erythema Ab Liporaspiration is a permanent blotchy (net-like pattern) pink-brown discoloration of the skin resulting from rasping the undersurface of the skin during superficial 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. Staying in bed increases the risk of clot formation, but not getting enough rest can result in increased swelling of the surgical area. The incisions involved in this procedure are tiny, but the surgeon may close them with stitches or staples. These will be removed the day after surgery. However, three out of eight doctors use no sutures. Minor bleeding or seepage through the incision site is common after this procedure. Vascular Injury and Excessive Bleeding Vascular injury and excessive bleeding are rarely caused by liposuction with the use of microcannulas . Post-Liposuction Panniculitis is a manifestation of postoperative inflammation due to incomplete drainage of blood-tinged tumescent anesthetic solution and the formation of small seromas. It is more common when incisions are closed with sutures thus preventing complete drainage and entrapping the inflammatory blood-tinged anesthetic solution beneath the skin.

Liposuction can damage superficial nerves. Some patients lose sensation in the area that has been suctioned, but feeling usually returns with time. It is far more common with the use of ultrasonic assisted liposuction (UAL). 
Rapid heart rate can occur during or after liposuction as a result of the epinephrine (adrenaline) that is an essential ingredient of the tumescent local anesthetic solution . In a more recent survey of surgeons who only do liposuction by local anesthesia, there were no deaths in 65,000 cases of tumescent liposuction . Performing lipoplasty in any facility should be required to have surgical privileges/ accreditation to perform this procedure in an acute care hospital and Physician should be qualified for examination or certified by an ABMS-recognized surgical board