• Women may be asked to stop taking the contraceptive pill.
• Patients with anemia may be asked to take iron supplements.
Before the procedure, it is important that patients sign a consent form. This demonstrates that patients have fully understood the risks and benefits of the procedure. If a patient consents to having surgery, it means that they fully understand all the risks, benefits, and alternatives to the procedure.
The patient is placed under general anesthetic before they are given a liposuction procedure that will take place over a period of 1 to 4 hours.
Sometimes doctors use a procedure called epidural anesthesia to treat certain parts of the body that are not painful or cause them to feel a lot of pain. Some doctors may recommend that a local anesthetic be used for certain procedures to be performed on the lower part of the body. It is usually injected into an area which surrounds the spinal cord (known as an epidural space). It causes the skin to become completely numb and sometimes even causes you to feel pain. Local anesthesia is injected into the spinal cord of a patient to cause him to have a temporary disability in his legs and stomach.
It is possible to use a local anesthetic to temporarily numb the area after the procedure is completed.
If the patient requires only local anesthesia, they may be asked to stand up during the surgery in order to completely remove the excess fat.