Loose Skin and Stretch Marks or Scar? It's a Trade-Off

A Tummy Tuck can do wonders to remove excess skin from pregnancy weight-gain, but it can't do everything.

In exchange for a scar across the pubic area from hip to hip, most of the stretch marks and all of the loose skin below the belly button can be removed. However, unless there is severe laxity of the abdominal wall above the umbilicus, the stretch marks above the belly button will move down the abdominal wall after the skin is tightened, and will end up below the belly button and above the final scar. For most patients, the final appearance is still a great improvement from the condition before surgery, so the presence of a few residual "re-located" stretch marks is not a draw-back, and usually these stretch marks are less visible as the skin is now tighter.

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Some patients benefit from liposuction to selected areas of unwanted excess fat (for example, in the hip and flank areas) in addition to Tummy Tuck, but for skin laxity, liposuction alone is not the appropriate choice of procedure.

The benefits of a formal abdominoplasty / tummy tuck procedure are two-fold. The primary benefit is to remove infraumbilical fat and skin and the secondary benefit is to tighten the anterior abdominal wall and rectus fascia. In your particular case, a tummy tuck would remove central infraumbilical abdominal fat and stretch marks and tighten the abdominal muscles.

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