Liposuction is one of the most commonly performed cosmetic procedures in the world—and also one of the most misunderstood. I’ve been performing liposuction in my private practice since the mid-1980s, and over the decades I’ve seen both extraordinary results and very unfortunate ones. Ironically, as the number of liposuction providers has increased, the number of excellent outcomes has not.
At Orange County Plastic Surgery, we are now seeing a growing number of patients who come to us after having liposuction elsewhere and are unhappy with their results. The complaints are strikingly consistent: either too much fat was left behind, resulting in little visible improvement, or too much was removed, leaving dents, ripples, and surface irregularities that are difficult—or sometimes impossible—to fully correct.
To the untrained eye, liposuction looks deceptively simple. After all, how hard could it be? A small incision, a cannula inserted under the skin, a back-and-forth motion, and out comes the fat. This false sense of simplicity is precisely why liposuction has been taken up by many practitioners who are not trained plastic surgeons, including providers without surgical training in contouring the human body.
What truly matters in liposuction is judgment. Knowing how much fat to remove, from exactly where, and in what plane, is the result of years of training and experience. Remove too little and the contour doesn’t change. Remove too much and the skin can collapse irregularly over the remaining tissue.
