💎 Plastic / Reconstructive Aftercare
Liposuction Aftercare Instructions
A day-by-day recovery guide for liposuction: what to expect, how to care for yourself, and when to call. Free to read and print.
Typical recovery: about 42 daysPlastic / Reconstructive
What to expect
Your Procedure Determines Your Care
- •This body-contouring surgery draft stays intentionally conditional because closure, reconstruction method, site, devices, and anesthesia change aftercare.
- •Your surgical team's exact written instructions are the source of truth for this procedure.
Do Not Borrow Another Procedure's Timeline
- •Drain removal, dressing changes, support garments, positioning, therapy, and return to activity require procedure-specific clinical decisions.
- •Contact the clinic if this plan does not match the operation, dressings, devices, or instructions you received.
Liposuction recovery, day by day
Day 0
Your body-contouring surgery protocol
- Use the exact written home-care instructions from your surgical team. This draft does not replace the operation-specific plan they approved for you.
- Keep each incision and treatment-area dressing on the schedule in your written plan. Different body areas may have different dressings and closure care.
- If you were discharged with a drain, follow the clinic's written emptying and measurement steps for that drain. Do not use a generic removal threshold or remove it yourself.
- Take only the medicines and doses in the plan from your surgeon or prescribing clinician. Ask before adding, stopping, or changing a medicine.
Driving, support, and position
- If you received sedation or general anesthesia, do not drive and follow the adult-escort and home-support plan from your surgical team.
- If you received local anesthesia only, drive only when your clinic says it is safe and the dressing, pain, vision, movement, and medicines do not impair you.
- Use the exact standing, sitting, and sleep position your surgeon prescribed for the treated area. Do not copy the bent or elevated position used for a different operation.
Days 1-3
Protect the surgical area
- If your team supplied a compression garment, wear it only as fitted and for the schedule they prescribed. Call if it feels newly too tight, rolls over an incision, or changes skin color or feeling.
- Use the walking plan from your team, but avoid bending, straining, lifting, or exercise until the specific treated areas are cleared.
- Follow the clinic's closure-specific instructions for stitches, staples, Steri-Strips, skin glue, or an open wound. Do not treat these closures as interchangeable.
Watch the right details
- Check every treated area rather than assuming all swelling is interchangeable. Report a sudden one-sided change or a garment that is damaging the skin.
- Call the surgical team if a dressing becomes soaked, displaced, too tight, or wet before its planned change.
- Avoid soaking and do not start ointment, silicone, massage, or other wound products until the surgical team approves them for this closure and site.
Days 4-14
Procedure-specific follow-up
- Your surgeon checks incisions, treated areas, support fit, and any drains before advancing posture, lifting, or exercise.
- Keep every scheduled wound, dressing, device, reconstruction, and therapy visit that applies to your operation.
- Do not advance lifting, exercise, driving, work, or other activity until your team clears that activity for this procedure.
Days 15-42
Continue the approved plan
- Continue wound, device, support, therapy, and activity instructions until the responsible clinical team changes them.
- Start scar care and sun protection only after the area is fully closed and your clinical team gives a site-specific plan.
- Ask for reassessment if pain, swelling, function, skin color, or the wound is getting worse instead of improving.
When to call your provider or 911
- •Call 911 now for trouble breathing, chest pain, fainting, confusion, or swelling of the face or throat
- •Call your surgical team promptly for bleeding that does not stop after following their pressure instructions or for rapidly increasing swelling
- •Call your surgical team for fever or chills, spreading redness or warmth, pus, new odor, wound opening, or pain that is worsening instead of improving
- •Call your surgical team promptly for rapidly increasing swelling, severe tightness, or new skin discoloration
When in doubt, call your clinic. For a medical emergency, call 911.
Recovery milestones
- Day 3
Early Surgical Review
Confirm the operation-specific dressing, wound, support, position, and medicine plan with the surgical team.
- Day 14
Recovery Progress Check
Notice what is improving, unchanged, or worsening. Contact the care team if symptoms are getting worse or the next step is unclear.
- Day 42
Recovery-Plan Review
The responsible clinical team reviews healing and decides whether restrictions, therapy, support, or scar care should change.
For clinics
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QR Rx sends this exact liposuction recovery plan to every patient, branded to your practice, opened by a QR code. It checks in automatically, answers post-op questions, asks for a review at the right moment, and brings patients back for their next visit. The aftercare you already owe every patient, doing the work of keeping them.
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