The risk of surgery increases with more procedures

Mare55

The one thing we have learned is that the risk of death increases with longer operative time and combined procedures. What can't be answered is precisely is how much does adding these additional procedures increase your personal risk.  

The rationale for combining procedures is it is the first hour of anesthesia that is the most expensive. Recovery time runs somewhat in parallel expect that you will be much sicker after surgery when all these surgeries are combines than when they are done separately.  Will you get away with the combination surgery?  Statistics suggest that your risk of mortality is perhaps on the order of 1:5000 have combination surgery like this.  

Putting this in perspective, the risk dying in a crashing when you fly on a commercial jet is one in 3 million.  Don't ask your surgeon how much risk you are willing to take. General plastic surgeons are initially trained as general surgeons. Some have a very skewed view of what an acceptable risk is. Recognize that even with a very high mortality rate of 1 in 5000 cases, this is still infrequent enough that a surgeon can go an entire career without an operative death. Reduce your risk by doing less surgery. Don't have a "neck lift" at the time of the liposuction and tummy tuck.

You and your surgeon should always put safety as your number one concern. While it may be possible to do all of the procedures in one sitting, you and your surgeon need to look at total anesthesia time, total expected blood loss, total surface area of surgical trauma, general health and relative risks, time in one position, recovery regimen, post-op care available, etc. In addition, while you might plan to have all of these procedures done at the same sitting, you must plan for "outs" where the surgery can be terminated if the surgeon feels uncomfortable or the surgery/anesthesia does not proceed as planned. For this, you need to prioritize your procedures (which area is the most important?) and your surgeon must make clear to you under what circumstances and at what point might he curtail the procedure in the interest of safety so that you will not be surprised or disappointed.

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