Safety of ultrasound-assisted liposuction: a survey of 660 operations.

BACKGROUND: Ultrasound-assisted liposuction (UAL), although providing some advantages over tumescent liposuction (TL) and traditional or suction-assisted liposuction (SAL), has been found to have some controversial complications. We performed this study to evaluate UAL's complications and to compare UAL with the previous routine techniques for liposuction.

METHODS: Six hundred sixty UALs were performed on 609 consecutive volunteers by one cosmetic surgeon. Demographic characteristics, local and systemic complications, and also severe adverse events (SAE) were registered intraoperatively and at 1, 4, and 12 weeks postoperatively.

RESULTS: No SAEs were identified and only nine complications, consisting of two systemic complications (two cases of hypotension) and seven local complications (3 seromas, 3 cases of contact dermatitis, and 1 case of hemorrhage), were registered. This yields a complication incidence of 1.36%. There was no association between the number of complications and the body region, age, gender, or body mass index (BMI).

CONCLUSION: Our findings are in line with others in that performing UAL using local tumescent anesthesia is a safe procedure with a very low complication rate and has remarkable advantages over other liposuction techniques (TL and SAL). In addition, there was no correlation between the incidence of complications and body region, age, gender, or BMI.