the patients that we see who have had a massive weight loss either from their
own hard work or with the little assistance from a procedure like a
gastric bypass or a gastric sleeve those patients tend to have loose skin almost
head to toe and they will have gone through this wonderful life changing
weight loss they've gotten rid of high blood pressure they don't have diabetes
anymore they're working out and they still have this skin that's the reminder
of what they had been through when you've lost 150 or 200 pounds what
happens is you lose the skin elasticity and it doesn't go back and you're loose
mostly everywhere and so we do facelifts arm lifts breast lift tummy tucks or
lower body lifts thigh lifts and the question always is well what do you want
to do and how much do you want to do and what order do you want to do it in we
will end up over several procedures to make sure that we can be the safest for
them operating in each of those areas that concern them and patients often
inquire what the scars look like or where we will the scars be and that's very
individual so if you've lost lots and lots of weight we're talking a couple
hundred pounds and you have lots of extra skin underneath the arm odds are
you'll need a pretty long incision to remove skin if there's a little skin
it's a little scar sometimes it's a small scar that is just in the armpit
area so it really depends on the individual but we're trying to put
scars in places that are well hidden if we're going to do a thigh lift and we
need someone's lost a lot of weight and have a lot of extra skin we want to do
that incision on the inside of the thigh so if you were a skirt you can't see it
now if you were a short enough shorts you'll still be able to see it but the
scar has to go somewhere and so we can compromise as well if someone is
absolutely committed to not having a scar on their thigh we can do a lesser
surgery we can remove less skin now it comes with a little bit less result but
we can tailor that to what the patient wants so people often come in concerned
about stretch marks and and with good reason if you catch
stretch marks early sometimes we can laser them if there's a color
distinction in other words if they're still red we can use a laser perhaps to
help soften the distinction between the stretch mark and the surrounding skin
but once they've matured once they've become actual stretch marks that look a
pale kind of like the skin around them they're the best option at that point is
really cut them out and that's often done with the tummy tuck now a tummy
tuck is going to get rid of all of the stretch marks below the belly button but
sometimes people have stretch marks above it and what's remarkable about a
tummy tuck is not only do we get rid of the ones below the belly button but by
pulling down and stretching the ones that are above the belly button we make
them look better it's really kind of remarkable they're brought lower and
they seem to improve so a tummy tuck is a wonderful procedure for stretch marks
often patients want to know whether we do liposuction at the time of
weight-loss surgery and will that help them lose more weight the short answer
is yes the long answer is it depends on where the fat is if there's just a
problem area and lots of people have problem areas even people that have lost
lots of weight there's just some areas they can get rid of the fat and in that
problem area we can do some liposuction and we can remove the fat from that one
area and then also maybe remove some skin because usually weight loss
patients are coming in because of extra skin but if there's extra fat deposits
there at the same time yes we remove that and will you weighed less afterward
yes you will because we'll be removing that fat deposit from that area and it
won't ever come back there so we do a lot of body contouring it's it's one of
those things where patients afterwards are incredibly grateful they've worked
hard to lose all that weight and now this is sort of the icing on the cake
really important