Influence of laser-supported liposuction on hemoglobin, hematocrit, and erythrocyte values in patient's blood

Abstract

Liposuction has been used as a surgical method of shaping the body for more than 30 years. Although of considerable interest, there are very few studies dealing with preoperative and postoperative blood parameters. There are no papers reporting what goes on in a patient's blood after laser-assisted lipectomy. Standard blood samples were evaluated in patients before and after lipectomy. We compared values of hemoglobin, erythrocytes, hematocrit, and leukocytes. We performed the same evaluation in patients undergoing laser-supported lipectomy. Moreover, we compared the decrease in postoperative values in laser-aided lipectomy patients with the reduction of values in conventional lipectomy patients. A paired two-sided Student's t test was used for statistical evaluation. p < 0.005 was acknowledged to be statistically significant. We found that hemoglobin, erythrocyte, and hematocrit levels after surgery were lower and differed specifically from the values before surgery. Nevertheless, no patient had values diverging from the norm after surgery. This was the case in both conventional and laser-aided surgery patients. We found no statistically significant difference when comparing the degrees of value decrease (“before minus after conventional” versus “before minus after laser-assisted”). Furthermore, we found that leukocyte levels increase very rapidly in venous blood within the 24 h following surgery. This is statistically significant in the case of both conventional and laser-assisted liposuction. This emphasizes that every patient has normal red blood cells, hemoglobin, and hematocrit levels after surgery. We conclude that conventional liposuction and laser-assisted lipectomy have a similar influence on hemoglobin erythrocytes and hematocrit. Our work is the first study of blood examinations during postoperative care following laser-assisted liposuction.