Liposuction healing time is determined by three factors that include preoperative preparation, operative maneuvers completed, and compliance with postoperative instructions. These three components will ultimately affect your liposuction recovery and are elaborated on below.
Preoperative preparation
Preoperative preparation efforts that will affect your healing time include optimizing your nutrition, eliminating blood thinners, and avoiding smoking. Optimizing your nutrition requires increasing your protein intake has two effects on your liposuction healing time. First, increasing your protein intake will ensure that your body has the building blocks to lay down collagen. Collagen is the essential molecule that heals tissue and incision lines. Second, increasing protein intake will increase your blood protein, called albumin. High albumin in your bloodstream will result in minimizing leakage of plasma fluid from your blood vessels. The less leakage of plasma fluid, the less swelling and quicker healing you will experience. Eliminating blood thinners is critical so that you don’t ooze blood into your soft tissues. The less blood you ooze into your soft tissues, the less pain you will experience, and the less risk of hyperpigmentation from the staining effect of hemosiderin in your blood. Avoiding smoking is a critical component of liposuction since nicotine will contract microvessels and limit the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to your skin cells. Since liposuction results in irritation and compromise of microvessels, the added insult of nicotine will surely result in skin compromise and possible necrosis.
Operative maneuvers completed
The more involved your liposuction surgery, the more irritation to your soft tissues. The more irritation to your soft tissues, the more liposuction healing time required to get you back to your normal physical activities. This is most appreciated from patients undergoing liposuction 360, where liposuction is performed circumferentially that may include 40% of your body surface. Others may require excisional surgery to tighten the skin simultaneously with the removal of fat. Surgical incision lines add to the healing times as collagen molecules must traverse the incision line and heal across soft tissue divisions.
Compliance with postoperative instructions
Compliance with post-operative instructions is critical to a quick liposuction healing time. Measures that must be followed include strict wearing of compression garments, serial lymphatic massages, and continued intake of a high protein diet, continued elimination of blood thinners, and continued avoidance of any smoking. Patients are also asked to walk several times a day to avoid the development of vein clots that can lead to a DVT or PE. This complication can be detrimental and delay your healing time.
Liposuction healing time Conclusion
In summary, liposuction healing time is affected by multiple factors that extend throughout your liposuction journey. The factors that most affect liposuction healing time include preoperative preparation, the extent of operative maneuvers, and compliance in the postoperative period.