What is the Difference between Vaser & other types of Liposuction
23rd February 2011Liposuction
Mr Adrian Richards, Leading Plastic Surgeon of Aurora clinics talks about the difference between Vaser Liposuction and other types of Liposuction techniques. For more information or to schedule a FREe Consultation with our specialist plastic surgeon, please ring us on 01844 214362.
Transcript
What is the difference between Vaser and other types of liposuction?
Hello. My name is Adrian Richards, and this is the third in our series of short videos on liposuction. Today I’m going to be talking a little bit about the technologies which can be used to help dissolve the fat and aid its removal. I’ve talked before about how we’ve progressed from traditional liposuction to tumescent liposuction. Really all of these techniques that I’m going to talk about today, Vaser, ultrasound assisted, water assisted, power assisted, all of these types of liposuction really use a tumescent technique and the fat is still removed by very small cannulas. Cannulas are the suction tubes which remove the fatty tissue.
Now, the recent techniques, we could talk about smart lipo, power assisted, ultrasound assisted, and then there was also a water technique which helps dissolves the fat. All these really do is help disturb the surroundings, the outer layer of the fat cell. Basically, by disturbing that, the fat is then released and it’s easier to liposuc. So you’re not removing full, whole cells. What we’re doing is liquefying or emulsifying the fat first and then it’s removed.
Ultrasound assisted liposuction essentially does that by using ultrasound energy, which is basically vibrations to shake up the fat cells and disrupt them. Power assisted liposuction uses mechanical power, so you have a cannula which moves in millimetres in and out. That together with the tumescent fluid in the area acts to break up the fatty cells. Other techniques, smart lipo is similar, and also there’s an external ultrasound probe that can be used.
In my opinion, the state of the art at the moment, and we’re recording this in August 2010, the state of the art type liposuction is called Vaser liposuction. That’s V-A-S-E-R. In that technique, it uses ultrasound energy to disrupt the fat cells. So just going through the technique, what would be involved is the procedure would be performed with you either awake or with you under a bit of sedation normally. Fluid is put in via very small, little incisions. The area is then infiltrated and blown up as in the tumescent technique, which I’ve discussed before. Then a Vaser probe, a very, very thin probe, is inserted into the fatty tissue and the ultrasound energy is then moved through the fatty tissue, disrupting the cells. Then these cells, the emulsified cells are removed with traditional liposuction cannulas. It’s a very similar technique to tumescent. The only real difference with Vaser is that the Vaser energy probe is used to disrupt the outline, the cell membrane, which is the lining of the cell, emulsifying the fat.
What are the advantages? The advantages are again less swelling, less bruising, more efficient removal of fat with less bleeding and less risk to you.
In summary, we’ve really come from dry liposuction through wet liposuction, tumescent liposuction, and now we’ve got these really great devices, particularly Vaser, which really help dissolve the fat and make the whole process of removing fat much better for you, much less painful for you, more fat can be removed with a quicker recovery period.
So I hope you found that useful and informative. We’re going to carry on the series of videos on liposuction, and I’m going to be talking about what to expect, what areas can be treated, and also some of the pitfalls that I think it would be good to avoid.