Dominic C. Foti, MD

Our commitment is to provide the highest standard of care and excellence in the plastic surgery field. Dr. Foti tailors each procedure carefully to ensure an excellent outcome and to make your experience a memorable one.

Cosmetic Surgery Colorado Springs Liposuction

More than 300,000 liposuction procedures were done in 2008. If you look on the internet or the yellow pages you will find a dizzying array of procedures advertised. This is especially true in large cities, such as Denver, where competition for cosmetic cases can be fierce. In order to stand out from the competition, there is a tendency to "brand" the liposuction being done as "smart" or "hi definition" liposuction. Unfortunately, these techniques are no different than the liposuctions that all well trained plastic surgeons perform.

Mesotherapy, the injection of chemicals under the skin to dissolve fat, has been shown to be medically dangerous and fraught with serious complications. The use of lasers directed through skin in order to "dissolve" the fat non-invasively has not worked. Basically there are no effective non-invasive liposuction techniques available.

Surgical liposuction is still the gold standard. It was introduced in the US in the 1980's. The original liposuction technique suctioned globules of fat into a canula and sheared off. This was found to be traumatic to the tissues, physically demanding to perform and the volume of fat that could be removed relatively small. The next technique to come along was power assisted liposuction or PAL. Unfortunately this only made the procedure less physically demanding for the surgeon but still a traumatic means of removing fat.

The big breakthrough in liposuction was the ultrasonic liposuction technique. This is the technique that we prefer at Colorado Springs Cosmetic Surgery. The fat cells are liquefied by the ultrasonic waves, which is less traumatic to the tissue and causes less damage to blood vessels and nerve. Because ultrasonic liposuction is less traumatic to the tissues, more fat can be removed safely. Ultrasonic liposuction also has more of a tightening effect on skin, reducing the incidence of sagging after removal of the fat.

I believe ultrasonic liposuction is the best means of removing unwanted fat that is available today.

Please contact my Colorado Springs office, (719) 473 2932 if you have any questions about the liposuction procedures discussed in this article.