Surgeons performed nearly 11 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures last year ... And here in Idaho we are just as concerned about looking and feeling our best. And now there is a new liposuction procedure and it's available right here in Eastern Idaho.
The new lipo is called smart lipo and is less invasive, than traditional lipo. I have never had traditional lipo and one of the reasons I haven't is it just looked a little harsh to me.so I decided to look into the differences between the two.
With traditional lipo, fat is broken up and then sucked out of the body, leaving the body bruised and swollen.
New technology is making looking our best easier than ever before... if you have a little area you would like to contour, smart lipo could be for you.
"You need to feel like, I've done the best job I can with diet and exercise and that kind of thing...and now maybe I just want my abdomen contoured some and obviously with the patients if you don't carry some excess weight, you do need to be realistic with your expectations, but really this is all about body contouring." -Catherine Durboraw, M.D.
To Contour the body, Smart lipo uses a laser that, in a way melts fat.. The beam ruptures fat cells kinda like bursting a bubble...
"And you're pretty much awake during the procedure but you're not feeling any discomfort. The laser filament looks like a piece of spaghetti...It's this tiny little catheter that we insert through tiny little puncture holes in the skin so really there's almost no scar from the insertion sites that we go through." -Catherine Durboraw, M.D.
With Traditional Lipo you have to be put completely asleep and the recovery time is anywhere from 6 months to a year. But with smart lipo, total recovery time is 4 months.
"You just don't get as much bruising or swelling because this is far less traumatic to the tissue you know this isn't a blunt object jamming into the cells freeing them up. This is a much more gently process so you're not as sore... You literally can go back to work the next day if you had to. I usually recommend that you take a day to just relax." -Catherine Durboraw, M.D.
This is "Annie." She's had both traditional lipo and smart lipo. It took her a year and a half to recover from traditional lipo.
"You don't see the results as soon but the nice thing about it is that when you take and you know you suck out the fat I guess I should say...it's kinda like blowing up a balloon and letting the air out so that skin looks all wrinkly and it flattened and its not pretty... It takes a while for that to and its still no back to the way I would like to have it...With the smart lipo, it absorbs into the body and takes a little bit more time before you see the results but the skin stays very nice very taught...you don't have the wrinkling, you don't have the sagging of the skin and that's what I liked about it."
So to show you what the process of smart lipo and the recovery are really like...I decided to go under the knife and take you through the experience with me.