How Much Fat Can You Safely Remove With Liposuction? Does it Vary With BMI?

Posted on July 13, 2015

LG - Lipo

Another great little paper out of my recent May 2015 Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Journal.  “Is there a Safe Lipoaspirate volume? A Risk Assessment Model of Liposuction Volume as a Function of BMI Based on TOPS Data.” This was a study out of Northwestern University.

Background: There is controversy around what is the safe maximum volume permissible of fat removed in a single surgery.  The current recommendation is 5 liters.  They were looking at is this number the right number?  They wanted to see if volume removed should vary with BMI.

Methods: They looked at the dynamic relationship between liposuction volume versus the BMI, and did regression models.  They wanted to adjust for potential confounding variables.

Findings: 11,615 patients had done liposuction, with 542 of those meeting large volume criteria (5L).

Conclusion:

Their analysis did not support having an absolute number cut off.  Instead, they think there is a dynamic relationship between BMI and the amount of fat removed by liposuction. They do not think there should be an absolute number for safety cutoff or impression of risk.