Liposuction for Male Breast Contouring
Gynaecomastia is the term for excess breast tissue in men. Pseudo-gynaecomastia is the term for an increase in the fatty component. Both are unwanted and are a common cause of social embarrassment. Many men describe years of avoidance of situations such as swimming, or removing their top on a beach or hot day.
It is more helpful to loose excess weight before seeking surgery. You should aim to get your BMI back into the normal weight category. If your BMI category is “overweight” or worse still “obese”, then surgery should be deferred.
How to Calculate your body mass index (BMI):
- Work out your height in metres and multiply the figure by itself.
- Measure your weight in kilograms
- Divide the weight by the height squared (ie. the answer to Number-1). For example, you might be 1.8m (5ft 11in) tall and weigh 76kg (12st). The calculation would then be:
1.8 x 1.8 = 3.24. BMI would be 76 divided by 3.24 = 23.5.
There are many BMI calculators you can find online.
Liposuction
Water-jet liposuction is a technologically advanced, safe, gentle and focussed technique to remove male breast fatty excess (pseudo-gynaecomastia, chest wall fat, pectoral fat). The fatty tissue is detached and simultaneously removed with a razor-sharp water jet. Unlike with conventional methods, the body is not pumped full of a large quantity of fluid. Your doctor can therefore assess the result already during treatment and operate more precisely.
The technique can be performed with the patient completely awake but just using local anaesthetic. Alternatively, a general anaesthetic can be used. The water assisted technique uses very modern technology to gently separate fatty tissue using the force of the spray rather than the traditional technique which used much greater force, and hence caused more tissue trauma and pain.
Incisions: small stab incisions are made in the skin around the pectoral area to insert a thin metal tube called a cannula. This is used to spray a local anaesthetic solution into the fatty tissue. It acts immediately to numb the tissue. The whole male chest wall area can be treated. Then the injection cannula is swapped for the suction cannula and the disrupted fat cells are effortlessly sucked out. Finally, excess fluid is allowed to drain out and the chest wall area is tightly dressed. A compression garment is worn for 2-4 weeks.
Mr Turton offers water jet assisted liposuction from the Leeds Nuffield Hospital only. Please contact his secretary, Lisa Harris, for further information.
The benefits can be summarised as:
– Significantly shortened surgery times
– Optimised intraoperative evaluation of the surgical site
– The tissue is not destroyed
– Pain, swelling and blue patches are reduced
– A smaller quantity of analgesia is required
– Greater ability to model transition zones and small areas of liposuction
– Greatly increased patient satisfaction
– Simultaneous water jet and suction technology
– Minimised tissue damage, protection of nerves and blood vessels
– Little concomitant medication and patient stress
– Pain reducing infiltration technology. The technique allows patients to be awake if wanted and to see the results immediately
Limitations:
Any thick glandular tissue will usually have to be removed surgically, as the liposuction technique will not remove this. A general anaesthetic is required for the surgical technique, and an incision is made at the edge of the areola to make the scar as inconspicuous as possible.
The Body-Jet Machine and the jet from the cannula:
