Adipocytes Viability After Suction-Assisted Lipoplasty: Does the Technique Matter?

[BACKGROUND] Suction-assisted lipoplasty (SAL; liposuction) is an established aesthetic procedure in plastic surgery. The main parameters differentiating one method of lipoplasty from another are safety, consistency of results, and other more technical parameters. Due to the recent popularity of lipotransfer, the quality of extracted fat has become a relevant parameter. We compare the viability of extracted adipocytes after dry SAL, hyper-tumescent PAL (power-assisted lipoplasty), and water-assisted lipoplasty (WAL).

[METHODS] We used fluorescent microscopy to differentiate viable from necrotic/apoptotic cells after liposuction using each of the mentioned methods.

[RESULTS] The ratio of living cells between the three methods was significantly different with dry liposuction yielding inferior ratios (p = 0.011). When omitting extreme results, we found that the body-jet technique (WAL) yielded higher ratios of living cells than the hyper-tumescent technique (p < 0.001). The total number of cells was highest in the hyper-tumescent method (p = 0.013).

[CONCLUSIONS] Our results indicate that the hyper-tumescent technique yields the highest number of cells, whereas the body-jet technique yields the highest living cells ratio. The dry technique is clearly inferior to both.

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