Get Your Squeeze On with Compression Garments After Lipo
Our patients often wonder why they have to traipse around feeling like they’re wearing Spanx for weeks after they have liposuction. Isn’t the fat gone? So, what’s with the squeezing everything in?
Dr. Herte recommends her patients wear compression garments for around six weeks following most liposuction procedures. There are three really good reasons why.
Minimize the swelling, bruising, and pain
You may think your body will heal itself, but it likes having some direction. Well-made surgical compression garments are designed to provide the perfect amount of squeeze uniformly across your body. What does this squeezing do? It keeps swelling in check, and it closes off all the tiny capillaries that were disturbed during the procedure. These two functions help to minimize pain during recovery, and who doesn’t like that?
Prevent your skin from dimpling like an orange
Early liposuction procedures were known for one bad side effect — skin dimpling, wrinkling, and depressions in the treatment area. Two issues were behind these bad results: too much fat may have been removed and scar tissue developed under the skin in a haphazard way.
Because you don’t see it, you may think you don’t develop scar tissue after a procedure like liposuction, but you do…under the skin. You don’t want the scar tissue to develop in all directions and at different rates, so you employ a compression garment to rein it in. By compressing the surface skin and tissue, you’re regulating where you build that scar tissue. Without compression, it’s the scar tissue that creates dimpling and irregularities, and it’s because the scar tissue is forming in a haphazard sort of way. This can still happen even if compression garments are worn religiously after your liposuction, but the chances are very slim.
Get rid of the sag
It makes sense. When you remove the fat from beneath the skin that skin wants to sag. What’s to hold it up now that the fat it’s been lounging on is gone? A compression garment does the same with your skin as it does with the formation of scar tissue — it leads it down the right path, so to speak. Compression helps your skin to shrink and contract down so that it eventually looks as if the fat was never there. There’s your new slim, taut contour. You’re basically making sure the skin knows where it is supposed to go.
Liposuction with Dr. Herte is an awesome procedure, helping you say “arrivederci” to those stubborn pockets of fat that have bothered you forever! But you have to remember that the key to liposuction is the healing and the downward tightening that comes during recovery, it’s not how the fat was suctioned out. Your diligence in wearing high-quality compression garments for up to six weeks will play a dramatic role in your final results.
Interested in getting rid of the fat pockets? Call Dr. Herte at 702-732-9600 and set up a consultation for liposuction.