Newport Beach, CA | Liposuction: From Planning to Recovery | Hakimi Plastic Surgery

Dr. Hakimi: We are all in our houses.

Speaker 2: I'm just trying to pray that my children don't walk in the room.

Dr. Hakimi: The most exciting part of watching TV now is just seeing every newscaster or weather forecast person's homes, and bedrooms, and living rooms, and kitchens these days. Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Today, my goal is to talk about only a couple of procedures that give you the most impressive results with the shortest downtime.

Dr. Hakimi: You see, there are procedures that you can do all year long. A tummy tuck, a breast lift, an arm lift. These are procedures with a couple of weeks of downtime. They come with a surgical scar, and they need a lot of preparation. Right? But they're also procedures that we see a surge in right around summer, springtime. These are the procedures that will make you ready for your summer goals, whether you want to call it a summer body or something that improves your self confidence when you get into a bathing suit. Most people, when they show more skin in their clothes, they would like minor improvements here and there. I will try to focus on those procedures today.

Dr. Hakimi: Awesome. Now, on a separate topic... So, that's as far as breast augmentation. It's a procedure that requires a couple of days of downtime. Within a few weeks afterward, you're going to have your natural look, and the scars are barely visible. The other procedure that's very popular in spring "preparing for the summer body," is a liposuction procedure. Patients always have some sort of body goal before they go out there in summer, and sometimes there's a little bit of fat left here and there that despite all their diet and exercise they couldn't get rid of it. That's where liposuction comes into play.

Dr. Hakimi: Our liposuction is called snapback lipo because we also have the technology that would raise your frequency. It can help your skin tighten up. We don't just melt the fat. It's a machine that... we do this procedure under local anesthesia. This patient is wide awake. We do the liposuction. Then with this machine, we treat your skin. So, as you melt fat and you try to contour your body, your skin also retracts and snaps back into place.

Dr. Hakimi: Why? Because after a certain age... let's say 40, 45, your skin loses some elasticity. I always tell my patients prior to having this technology, there is a small chance that you might have a little skin elasticity after the procedure. But now with this technology, it's like an insurance policy that we're going to melt your fat, and we know that your skin is going to tighten up afterward to follow the contour of your abdomen.

Dr. Hakimi: Some examples of liposuction. Now, this patient wanted liposuction and a buttocks argumentation. She went from a size four to a size six, but we liposuctioned her abdomen and her back. You can see the curvature that now she has and the improvement. This is a one year followup, and you can see the amount of fat retention that she's... We can do this to anywhere in your body. It's not limited to the abdomen. If behind the neck, sometimes patient have a fat pocket. We can melt the fat and tighten the skin under local anesthesia. These patients did not go under general anesthesia, and you can see that improvement in the flank.

Dr. Hakimi: Now, this is a different type of patient. As you can see, fat is not her problem. This is a very... This is one of my patients who's a bodybuilder. She has an Instagram account and a lot of followers, and she noticed that in certain lighting now after a certain age... let's say over 40, she sees wrinkles that she didn't see before. Now, she doesn't need a tummy tuck. She doesn't have that much excess skin. You couldn't even do a tummy tuck on her if you wanted to. In her case, we just need the radiofrequency part of our procedure. And you can see six months later, it makes your skin tighter and it helps your skin to retract and stick down to your muscle, so it's less loose. You can see the improvement in the upper part of her abdomen.

Dr. Hakimi: As I said, anywhere that you have fat and skin, we can do this procedure. You can see that what we call the 'bra rolls.' This patient got the entire back liposuction, and did the radiofrequency procedure. You can see the complete arbitration of the back rules and bra rolls in her.

Dr. Hakimi: Another patient that doesn't have any fat problems. She has extra skin. Probably a few years ago, she needed a mini tummy tuck. Now, we did the radiofrequency procedure on her, and this is her six months after. A very good example of someone that wanted to get ready for her summer body. I can't believe it's been a year from that procedure. You can see the result without any surgical scar, without any downtime. She was [inaudible 00:06:24] procedure.

Dr. Hakimi: Now, there are patients that really need a tummy tuck, but they don't want to have a tummy tuck. Now, we have a procedure that we can make it tighter without giving them the scar. The results are not going to be identical, but these patients don't want to have a scar. Now, another example of someone that at first glance you might think she needs liposuction because you see this area... But what she really complains about is the wrinkles underneath her belly button. It's the extra skin that after pregnancy when her body was going back to normal, it just didn't get rid of all the wrinkles.

Dr. Hakimi: We did the snapback lipo. Not only we fixed this area, but we also removed the wrinkles here. You can see the tightness that she has now. She still has some mild stretch marks, as you can see, but she didn't want to have a tummy tuck, and she just wanted these horizontal lines improved, and now we have a technology that we can do that.

Dr. Hakimi: Same thing with arms. We talked about the abdomen, we talked about the neck and back, and the same procedure applies to arms. The patient is wide awake during this procedure. We inject the numbing medication. And then with liposuction, we're going to suck some fat, and then do the radiofrequency procedure. This is the type of results one can expect from this procedure. It's not an arm lift, but [inaudible 00:08:03] the scars that an arm lift would give you. Another patient with bra roll improvement. Her thing was bra roll and her arm. We frequently combine the two.

Dr. Hakimi: Now, as far as recovery from liposuction, it's also not major. There are no real restrictions in lifting because we're not cutting anything. We're putting a very small hole for the cannula to go in your skin. As far as lifting heavy objects, lifting the baby, there's no restriction as long as it doesn't hurt. Usually, patients don't really need much medication for more than two or three days. You're going to feel achy. You feel like somebody's punching your abdomen or punching your arm. It's achy for a few days.

Dr. Hakimi: The main thing with the recovery from liposuction and snapback lipo is the commitment that you have to give me to wear your compression garment for a good six weeks. The compression garment does a few things. It helps the swelling and the edema to go away by squeezing your skin. Also, helps the skin to retract and stick down where you want it, rather than getting wrinkly on your muscle. And the majority of people say it feels good after a few weeks. When they start using it, they get used to it, and they call me and say, "Can I continue using it? Because when I work out, I like the fact that I have compression, whether it's on my arm or in my abdomen."

Dr. Hakimi: As far as results, by the end of the first month when the majority of your swelling goes away, you're going to start appreciating the results. You will see it. But the results are not going to be final for a good three to six months, because there is going to be some residual swelling that's going to be there for a good three months, and then the skin tightening portion usually lags behind. It takes about three to six months for new collagen to be made for your skin retractions will happen. But as far as debulking and losing the fat, you're going to start seeing the result by the end of the first month.