Today we're gonna talk a little bit about tummy tucks, or medically known as
abdominolplasty. I get a lot of questions about this procedure, so we thought we'd make this
video to answer some of those questions
first question I get asked is who are the best candidates for the procedure
and I would say that for me,
probably the best candidates are patients who are relatively fit,
take pretty good care of themselves, and just have extra skin
in the area below the belly button
for the most part these are patients who have gone through
prior pregnancy,
they are finished having kids, and they've lost the post pregnancy weight,
and some of their skin has come back, but there's a small portion underneath the belly button
that just won't go away
there's also a second population of patients
which are post-bariatric patients who are patients who have lost a lot of weight
either through a gastric bypass or just through diet and exercise alone
and I'd say in both these populations of patients you have
oftentimes extra skin hanging
underneath the belly button. So,
there are some popular misconceptions about tummy tucks
some people often feel that the
tummy tuck is really done to get rid of extra weight and fat in the
abdominal area, and that's actually not really what it's for
It's really more of a skin operation rather than a fat operation.
let's talk a little about the operative details, so the
tummy tuck operation usually lasts about three hours. There some variations from
patient to patient, depending on their size
and what they're looking for since the operation is
tailored individually
I'd say in my patient population maybe about 85% of patients or so will also get
some abdominal liposuction
in the flank areas, sort of in the side areas, just to get a little bit better waist definition
in terms of the operation itself, the design is to
get rid of that extra skin that's hanging underneath the belly button
so essentially I'll take out a wedge of tissue in an elliptical shape wedge
below the belly button down to the area of the pubic
hairline and by taking out all that wedge of tissue,
I'll take out the skin had actually the fat that's attached underneath it
so it does remove some fat, but it's just, as mentioned earlier, the purpose of the
operation really is because of extra skin
after taking this out, then I'll take out this skin that's above the belly button, lift
that up
and then pull it down to cover up the area that was
resected, so before pulling that down what i'll do is oftentimes is I will
do a horizontal tightening too, so it's sort of a tightening in two layers
with pregnancy or with massive weight gain
oftentimes the muscles that usually start out tight
like this start to become stretched apart, and so during a tummy tuck operation
once we lift up the skin and have access to it, I'll pull those muscles back together
to get them back into their original configuration and put some sutures in the area
to really
secure things in place so there's really a horizontal tightening
in the deeper layer and then that step a
vertical tightening of the skin layer. I get a lot of questions about the belly button
oftentimes people ask "will I have my same belly button or will I
get a new belly button?" and the answer is in the vast majority my patients I
keep them with their original belly button
the only difference is when I pull that skin down after taking
out the skin below, I'll make a new little opening or like a new window
for the belly button to poke out of, so patients will keep their own belly button,
it just has a new window for it to come out of and be
exposed to the outside world. In terms of post-op recovery,
most patients after the tummy tuck operation do have a lot of dressings
I do put a compression garment or an
abdominal binder over the area of the tummy tuck
and the idea is really to give a little bit more support and push things into place so
that they can kind of heal well together
during the operation I do use drains
and with those are are small tubes that come out of the skin to
get rid of all the extra fluid that the body sometimes does want to accumulate in
those areas. Drains will stay in usually about 2 weeks or so
again it depends on the patient. I'd say for my patients usually the range is 1-3 weeks, but
again the vast majority of patients really about 2 weeks. I'll take those out here in clinic,
it's really straightforward to do, and a lot of the bruising and swelling is gone by about
two weeks
and so I'd say for the majority of patients who work a
desk job, which seems to be the majority of people these days, I'd say most of them go back to work
right around
the two week mark. Some go back earlier, some go back later, but
that's a pretty good time frame to keep in mind
in terms of going back to the gym, doing all sorts of physical activity
I'd say really about the six week mark is often times, for most
patients, when they ca go back to that
again I see patients in my practice pretty frequently
after abdominoplasty so that I can monitor the healing, make sure
there are no problems, and for small
issues address them early on, and so I'll sort of
tailor when I think patients can go back to all those activities
based on their individual healing, but again most patients I'd say six weeks is a reasonable
time frame for expecting go back to
to the gym and all those sorts of things full time