The most dangerous aspect of liposuction is an attitude that ignores the risk of doing too much liposuction on a single day, or disregards the risks of doing multiple unrelated surgical procedures on the same day that liposuction surgery is performed. As judged by current worldwide experience, liposuction is amazingly safe. Rare problems that can potentially occur with any surgical procedure include infections, bleeding, skin ulcerations, and nerve injury.

Surgery can be as short as 30 minutes and as long as 3 hours.

When liposuction is done totally by local anesthesia, patients can usually depart from the surgical facility within 30 minutes of the completion of surgery. When general anesthesia is employed, then patients usually require one to three hours of post-anesthesia observation before being discharged home. Most patients can return to a desk-type job with two days after tumescent liposuction. Because of the significant decrease in swelling, inflammation and pain after tumescent liposuction, patients are able to return to normal physical activities very soon after tumescent liposuction.