It was under general anesthesia. I am not aware of any surgeon that is able to do this procedure under anything else. Perhaps it depends on the extent of your gynecomastia.
In terms of the drains, I had a kink on my left drain which is the reason clotted blood products accumulated and I had to have that painful procedure. It's just a random occurrence, no real way to predict it or prevent it effectively other than keeping vigilant about drain maintenance. (For those who haven't come across a drain yet, it is a tiny plastic bulb with a tube that is left in your chest after surgery to drain accumulate blood. This is so that your chest looks as smooth as possible.) I would gladly accept the discomfort of having the drain in for the appearance of my chest now. It would make sense that the less excess "junk" (ie. diluted blood/anesthesia) you have stuck in your chest while healing, the more aesthetic the chest is able to heal.
As a side note seroma (benign collection of fluid) accumulated on my left pec twice after the surgery (one at 3-4 days and one at ~10-11 days) and I had it drained with a tiny needle. This was absolutely painless and I did require even local lidocaine because of the temporary loss of innervation on the outside of my chest following surgery.
Other than that though, I am now 17 days post-op. The bruising is almost entirely gone, there are no more issues with the seroma, and I can see the ripples of my pec when I even mildly flex my chest. It looks amazing. Like I'm seeing an old friend I haven't come across in years.
In terms of healing, the sites where the drains were inserted take a little longer to heal so there are tiny scabs on each side of my chest. These are concealed inside the armpit so they're essentially invisible, but just something to note. I still wear the compression vest out of caution and will continue to do per
Dr. Delgado's directions to make sure the healing occurs as aesthetically as possible. The lateral aspects of my chest (between the nipple and the armpit) are numb to the touch, but that's an expected issue with this surgery--there are very tiny nerves that are almost impossible to avoid at least some damage to. The sensation will return eventually, I know, but it may not be the exact same as before. But who gives a crap? It's the outside of my nipple and it's not like I'm breast feeding.
Although my digital camera broke about a week before the surgery, I'll still put pre-op and 6 week post-op pictures (that's how long Best Buy will take to fix the camera). But I've seen a wide range of before and after pictures on this website, and I remember being terrified that I might still have breasts because a surgeon hesitated to take "too much" tissue. However, I could not imagine better results. I look equal to, or perhaps even better than, the sample pictures
Dr. Delgado has on his website. Thank god I'm finally at the tail end of all this nonsense.
By the way, my stats were 5'11" and 174 before surgery with mixed glandular and fatty tissue development. I'm relatively skinny with good muscle development. I haven't weighed myself over the last two weeks, but I've been on a diet to do the surgery justice. My guess is that I'm somewhere around 160 lbs right now. I'll give you better numbers later.