Aftercare
Following an uncomplicated procedure, under normal conditions, i.e. in the case of small superficial lipomas, no specific aftercare is necessary. The operation is usually performed on an outpatient basis, which means that the patient can practically go home immediately and is fully functional. If, however, the operation was a major intervention, especially if the lipoma was supplied via a larger vascular stalk, which had to be prevented and now bears the risk of postoperative bleeding, the surgeon should not put too much strain on himself immediately after the operation and possibly receive a pressure bandage or even stronger compression. A disadvantage of lipoma surgery is that scars often remain after the removal of the lipoma, since the incision has been made into the subcutaneous fatty tissue (or even deeper).These can sometimes be even more conspicuous than the original lipoma, which is often a great disappointment especially for those patients who have agreed to surgery for cosmetic reasons. It is therefore essential to inform them of this fact in advance.
Liposuction for a ganglion
Another possibility for the treatment of a lipoma is liposuction. This somewhat newer procedure is used mainly for larger lipomas (larger than 4cm), which have a soft consistency. Liposuction is hardly promising for lipomas with a higher connective tissue percentage, which are therefore coarser.
This method is also not recommended for lipomas on the hand or arm, as the risk of nerve damage is too high. The cannulas required for liposuction are inserted into the body through very small skin incisions, whereupon liposuction can take place. In the meantime, this procedure has been further developed so that it is possible to remove even larger subcutaneous lipomas without leaving a dent under the skin afterwards.
A further advantage is that only very small scars are left. However, this method has two decisive disadvantages: First, it is often not easy to remove the lipoma completely with liposuction. However, if only individual cells of the fat tumor remain in the body, this increases the risk of a recurrence of the tumor (= tumor relapse), which in principle also occurs after surgery, but is much lower here. Secondly, the cells are usually severely damaged mechanically by the suction, which is not really bad at first. However, if they are to be subjected to histological examination in order to be able to exclude a liposarcoma, a problem arises for the pathologist because there are only a few intact cells left at all which can be used for an evaluation and these then sometimes look so changed that they can hardly be considered representative of the actual tumor tissue.
