Liposuction is a surgical procedure performed to remove excess fat from the body, especially in areas where it tends to accumulate. Liposuction can be performed as a standalone treatment or in conjunction with other cosmetic procedures like breast augmentation or tummy tuck. Here you will find a discussion of Liposuction And Cosmetic Surgery Institute, can a cosmetic surgeon do liposuction, and is liposuction a cosmetic surgery.
In this guide, we review the aspects of Liposuction And Cosmetic Surgery Institute, can a cosmetic surgeon do liposuction, and is liposuction a cosmetic surgery.
Liposuction And Cosmetic Surgery Institute
Welcome to the Liposuction and Cosmetic Surgery Institute website, where you will find information about facial cosmetic surgery, breast augmentation and body contouring procedures. Our goal is to provide you with information to help you make an educated decision about how to enhance your appearance and feel better about yourself. To learn more about our services or to schedule a consultation with one of our board certified Illinois plastic surgeons, please contact our office today.
Welcome to the Liposuction and Cosmetic Surgery Institute website, where you will find information about facial cosmetic surgery, breast augmentation and body contouring procedures.
Welcome to the Liposuction and Cosmetic Surgery Institute website, where you will find information about facial cosmetic surgery, breast augmentation and body contouring procedures. We are dedicated to providing you with the highest quality of care with a personal touch. Our staff of board-certified plastic surgeons are committed to achieving your goals through advanced surgical techniques.
Let us help you achieve your dreams of beauty! Please take a few moments to browse through our website or contact us if we can be of assistance in any way.
Our goal is to provide you with information to help you make an educated decision about how to enhance your appearance and feel better about yourself.
Our goal is to provide you with information to help you make an educated decision about how to enhance your appearance and feel better about yourself. We believe that looking good and feeling good should be a priority, so we are committed to making sure that every person who walks through our doors gets the best possible experience.
We want you to know what procedures work well for different areas of the body and which ones are not appropriate for your needs or desires. There are always risks involved with surgery, but we will explain those risks before any procedure takes place so that there aren’t any surprises along the way. We also want you to know exactly what will happen during recovery from cosmetic surgery procedures so that there aren’t any unexpected challenges after surgery either!
To learn more about our services or to schedule a consultation with one of our board certified Illinois plastic surgeons, please contact our office today.
We would be happy to answer any questions you may have and to schedule a consultation with one of our board certified Illinois plastic surgeons. You can reach us at (888) 662-8375 or by filling out the contact form on our website, which is linked below.
can a cosmetic surgeon do liposuction
A state-by-state battle is underway within the medical profession over who has the right to perform breast implants and facelifts. Plastic surgeons shudder when they see other surgeons offer cosmetic procedures to patients — services that plastic surgeons say only they are qualified to perform.
But other specialists charge plastic surgeons with protectionism — leaving patients marooned in a confusing sea of competing medical boards and professional organizations. “The politics are incredibly confusing and it’s like high school when you get down to the bottom of it,” said Dr. Samir Pancholi, president of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery.
The groups have clashed for years, but the pressure is intensifying due to the financial squeeze many clinicians are feeling in the wake of the Affordable Care Act. Just last week, a federal judge in Colorado upheld the dismissal of a case against the American Society of Plastic Surgeons brought by a Utah oral surgeon who claimed the group’s 2011 “Do Your Homework” campaign urging patients to use only board-certified plastic surgeons for cosmetic procedures harmed the businesses of other surgeons.
While all plastic surgeons are trained in cosmetic surgery, not all cosmetic surgeons are plastic surgeons. Surgeons from other specialties have been performing nose jobs and tummy tucks for a long time — Italian gynecologist Dr. Giorgio Fischer invented liposuction. But plastic surgeons insist they are uniquely qualified to perform these procedures and others are a danger to patients.
“Everybody else developed and continues to pioneer these procedures,” Pancholi said. He specialized in ear, nose and throat surgery as a resident and now maintains a cosmetic surgery practice in Las Vegas. “To try to own, it, you can’t get your hands around it and you never will be able to.”
U.S. physicians performed 286,254 breast augmentations in 2014 — a 35 percent increase since 2000. A technician works on a silicone gel breast implant manufactured by the French company Sebbin Laboratories in Paris. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
There’s a simple question at the heart of the debate — which doctors are qualified to perform a liposuction on a patient who wants to shed a few pounds or insert breast implants in a woman seeking a new shape?
A patient attempting to answer that question can quickly become stranded by the crossfire of accusations launched by competing boards — the American Board of Plastic Surgery and the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery and competing professional organizations — the American Society for Aesthetic Surgery and the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery.
Plastic surgeons point to the training they receive in cosmetic procedures during a five-year residency program as evidence of their superiority compared to other surgeons. However, residents train in a dozen areas of plastic surgery including fixing cleft palates and treating burns. They may only spend a few months focusing on cosmetic procedures.
Some plastic surgeons who are certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery pursue fellowships to supplement the cosmetic surgery training they receive in their residencies, but many proceed straight to practice after completing the minimum number of cosmetic procedures — 55. A 2008 survey of about 300 plastic surgeon residents revealed 36 percent felt they needed more training in cosmetic procedures before offering these at their own practice.
“The fact that you might be trained in plastic surgery doesn’t mean that you’re competent in cosmetic procedures,” said Dr. Michael Will, president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery and an oral surgeon who performs everything from nose jobs to brow lifts through his Ijamsville, Maryland practice.
The American Board of Cosmetic Surgery (ABCS) accepts physicians in other surgical specialties such as otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) and opthamology (eye), where they gained extensive surgical training during residencies. They augment that knowledge with one- or two-year fellowships in cosmetic surgery and must complete 300 cosmetic procedures before achieving certification.
Cosmetic surgery is one specialty within the field of plastic surgery. Plastic surgeons clash with specialists in other types of surgery about who is qualified to perform these procedures. American Board of Cosmetic Surgery
“What can get confusing to the public is — the plastic surgeons are saying, ‘You should only trust us and not anybody else,’” Pancholi said. “What the ABCS believes is if you have a physician properly trained in cosmetic surgery, you are more likely to have a better outcome.”
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons is leading a state-by-state campaign to restrict advertising for cosmetic procedures to only those physicians certified by a board that is a member of the prestigious American Board of Medical Specialties, which oversees physicians in most major areas of medicine. The American Board of Plastic Surgery is a member board, but the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery is not (current members vote to accept new ones). So far, the group has won advertising restrictions in several states including California, Maryland, Nevada and Utah.
In her Park Avenue office just two blocks from Central Park in Manhattan, Dr. Tracy Pfeifer, a plastic surgeon who specializes in breast surgery, clicks through websites for physicians who advertise cosmetic surgery. She bristles when a list of credentials mentions the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery.
“That’s a nothing organization,” she said. “Of course, their board is not equivalent to our board because they don’t go through the same testing and training as we do.”
However, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, which only permits plastic surgeons to join, could not provide any empirical data suggesting procedures performed by plastic surgeons are safer than those performed by physicians from other specialties.
“I just think there are good surgeons or not so good surgeons in all walks of life,” Will said. “A blanket statement that plastic surgeons are more capable or more competent than cosmetic surgeons — I don’t think there’s data to support that.”
The plastic surgeons groups are adamant their training is superior and say finances are fueling other specialists to encroach on the field. Part of cosmetic surgery’s appeal is that practitioners can set their own prices — there is no insurance company or government agency with which to haggle because patients pay for these procedures out-of-pocket.
Standard rates for cosmetic procedures can run much higher than the reimbursements surgeons in other specialties such as obstetrics receive for delivering a baby. Pfeifer charges a surgeon’s fee of $8,500 to $10,000 for a tummy tuck. There is also less paperwork and fewer administrative staff required at a practice that deals primarily in cosmetic procedures.
“The biggest growth factor we’ve seen is general surgeons coming out of general surgery and getting paid a few hundred dollars on an appendectomy,” Will said. “We see them applying for fellowships in cosmetic surgery.”
These benefits are particularly tempting to doctors as it becomes increasingly expensive to maintain their practices due to rising costs and flat or declining payments for the services they perform. The Urban Institute estimated physicians’ Medicaid payments for treating low-income patients would drop by about 42.8 percent on average this year after a temporary provision to inflate rates through the Affordable Care Act expired. Private insurance rates often reflect those offered by the government.
“Traditional medicine pays less and it requires doctors to do more work to make the same amount of money,” Dr. Antonio Gayoso, chief of plastic surgery at St. Anthony’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, said. “So when you see your reimbursements dwindling in traditional medicine, you say, ‘What else can I do?’ ”
At the same time, all physicians who accept Medicare are required to switch to a new billing system next month. The American Medical Association estimates the administrative headache of converting to the new system will cost a small practice as much as $226,105 and a large practice roughly $8 million. These same practices have already purchased new computer systems and retrained staff to meet a 2015 deadline for implementing electronic health records.
“I think no matter how hard people are working, with low reimbursements, the staff you have to have to process all their paperwork and the expense to get all these computers and keep up with your specialties — people are saying, ‘I can’t do it,’ ” Pfeifer said.
But Will disagreed, suggesting one of the reasons plastic surgeons are in such a huff about competition from other specialties is that their own reimbursement rates for breast or facial reconstruction are lower now, too or failing to keep pace with inflation.
“I think they struggle a little bit with their own identity and existence with the competition out there and the contracting reimbursements on the reconstruction side of their practice,” he said.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons opposes a proposed Medicare adjustment that would boost rates doctors receive for caring for patients who are at least 65 years old by 0.5 percent for five years and hold rates steady for the next five years, saying the policy amounts to a 10-year pay freeze for plastic surgeons.
Demand for their cosmetic services has also dropped substantially in the past 15 years. Nationwide, surgeons performed about 1.7 million cosmetic procedures in 2014, 12 percent fewer than the 1.9 million they performed in 2000, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. In the same period, the demand for minimally invasive treatments — such as the Botox injections that surgeons as well as nonsurgical AACS members perform — rose by 154 percent to nearly 14 million procedures.
“They want to make sure they’re keeping themselves financially in the forefront,” Pancholi said. “I think it comes back to money.”
Dr. Jeffrey Kenkel, a plastic surgeon at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said the rates for these procedures have indeed dropped, but doesn’t believe that’s what’s fueling plastic surgeons’ concerns over others encroaching on cosmetic surgery. He said it’s all about ensuring patients are under the best possible care.
“Should an ob-gyn do breast augmentation or liposuction if it’s not part of their core training? And my answer is no, they should not because of the patent safety issue,” he said. “While a lot of the procedures seem relatively simplistic, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong and you have to be able to recognize what patients are at risk beforehand.”
There is a third shadowy route to cosmetic surgery that falls outside of both boards and professional organizations: Doctors in specialties such as anesthesiology and family medicine who have little or minimal training in surgery and who have not been certified by either the American Board of Plastic Surgery or the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery can still purchase a liposuction machine and complete a brief training course offered by the manufacturer to learn how to complete the procedure.
Larisa Erwin gets Botox injections from Dr. Shannan Ginnan at Reveal in Arlington, Virginia, in this 2009 photo. U.S. physicians performed 6.6 million Botox injections in 2014. REUTERS/Jim Young
Both the cosmetic and plastics surgeons’ groups say this training is grossly insufficient and dangerous.
Cathy, a 60-year-old woman who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida and prefers not to use her last name for privacy, visited her family doctor in 2011 for liposuction on her arms. He had recently purchased a liposuction machine and started advertising for it at his office. She paid about $3,000 for the procedure.
“It was horrible. It looked just like puddled, uneven, lumpy skin,” she said. “It looked so much worse than just having fat hanging under my arm.”
She visited Gayoso to have the problem resolved. But such examples are rare — he sees three to four patients a year who went under the knife of someone with little to no surgical training — and the vast majority of physicians performing these cosmetic procedures are trained as surgeons.
Will said plastic surgeons’ groups incorrectly lump all cosmetic surgeons who are not certified in plastics with these rogue doctors. The confusion may come because the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery also accepts physicians from nonsurgical specialties such as family practice. However, the group limits the procedures they can perform to noninvasive ones such as Botox injections.
He suggested patients who are trying to make sense of all the noise within the field of cosmetic surgery talk to former patients of any physician they are considering. He and Pancholi also said it’s important for patients to visit multiple doctors for second and third opinions.
At least for now, plastic surgeons’ complaints don’t seem to be making much of a dent in the ability of others to enter the field or maintain a thriving practice as overall demand for cosmetic procedures continues to rise.
“The month of July was the busiest cosmetic surgery month we’ve ever had,” Will said. “I can’t say it’s been a problem.”
is liposuction a cosmetic surgery
Balance, proportion and contour are fundamental elements of an attractive human form. Using liposuction, a cosmetic surgeon can sculpt a better shape to almost any area of the body, achieving dramatic improvements with subtle changes. Learn all about liposuction below.
Price RangeLiposuction
What is Liposuction?
Liposuction surgery removes excess deposits of fat to sculpt an improved shape to a patient’s body. While liposuction is best known as a fat removal procedure, it is also one of the best procedures to help a patient refine his or her shape. In fact, cosmetic surgeons often use liposuction to refine the results of other procedures, as no other technique allows for such detailed improvements in body contour.
Is Liposuction Right for Me?
Both men and women undergo liposuction every year to achieve a variety of different goals. Some patients want to look better in a swimsuit, while others want to find jeans that fit more comfortably. For men, liposuction can often successfully treat gynecomastia. Cosmetic surgeons will often use liposuction to enhance the results of other procedures.
If one or more of the following apply to you, liposuction is an option to consider:
The ideal liposuction patient has localized fat deposits & good skin tone.
However, it’s important to have realistic expectations about what liposuction can achieve. If any of the following apply to you, then liposuction may only offer limited success in helping you achieve your goals. Your cosmetic surgeon can recommend the options best suited to your needs.
Patients with sagging skin or muscle laxity may get better results from a tummy tuck.
Types of Liposuction
There are many different liposuction techniques available to surgeons today. The main difference between each type of liposuction is the technology they use to assist the fat removal process. The manufacturers of each type claim to have unique advantages, and cosmetic surgeons will sometimes prefer a certain technique depending on the nature of the procedure. Just remember that the skill and experience of the cosmetic surgeon performing liposuction will make the biggest difference in your results.
Below are some of the types of liposuction more commonly used by cosmetic surgeons today:
How much does liposuction cost?
Price Range: $1,000 – $20,000
Based on a nationwide ABCS survey, the average cost of liposuction is $3,617. Liposuction costs for any given patient can vary considerably depending on the size and location of the targeted areas of the body. During your consultation with a surgeon, be sure to ask about the price and any additional costs or fees associated with it.
How Liposuction Works
Liposuction is an outpatient procedure and can be safely performed using local anesthesia, intravenous sedation, or local anesthesia, depending on the nature of the procedure. Your cosmetic surgeon will recommend the anesthesia method that is most appropriate for your needs.
Your cosmetic surgeon will make one or more small incisions near the treatment area. A cannula, or thin tube, is inserted through these incisions to loosen excess fat beneath the skin. Then, the fat is suctioned out. The entire procedure can take under an hour or up to 3 hours or longer, depending on the number of areas treated.
Liposuction Recovery
Today’s advanced liposuction techniques are designed to minimize swelling, trauma and discomfort, and when the procedure is performed by a qualified cosmetic surgeon, recovery from liposuction can be remarkably quick. Many patients return to work just a few days after their procedures, depending on the physical requirements of their jobs and the extent of their procedures. While your cosmetic surgeon can prescribe pain medication, most patients find over the counter options more than enough to manage any post-operative soreness.
Your cosmetic surgeon may give you a compression garment to wear for a few weeks following surgery. This helps to minimize swelling and encourage optimal skin contraction. With proper care, scars should fade significantly over the months following surgery; in many cases, scars are barely visible after a year or so.
Results can last permanently with proper care
Liposuction removes fat cells from your body, and these fat cells will not grow back. However, it is important to maintain a stable weight to ensure that your new look remains optimal. If you gain a significant amount of weight in the future, your overall appearance is likely to change as your body stores excess fat in other locations.
When performed by a qualified cosmetic surgeon, liposuction is a safe procedure and an excellent way to improve the shape of your body. The best way to decide if liposuction is right for you is to consult with a board certified cosmetic surgeon. You can find cosmetic surgeons in your area by using our ABCS Find-a-Surgeon tool.