Horse bite and asymmetrical arm fat (Photo)

Hi. Thank you for your question regarding a horse bite and asymmetric arms. I’m sorry you were bitten by a horse. You are fortunate, I guess it could’ve been much worse.

To correct your arm asymmetry, you have two choices. You can repeat liposuction, or you can go ahead with an incision to try to remove skin and fat. The downside of an incision is that you will have a permanent resulting scar, and the correction of the arm asymmetry due to fat loss may not be significantly improved. Therefore, most plastic surgeons would agree that liposuction would be your best option. Even though it didn’t work well the first time, that doesn’t mean liposuction will not work the second time. Therefore, in conclusion, I would suggest arm liposuction to correct your arm symmetry after a horse bite. Good luck.

Sincerely,

J. Timothy Katzen, MD, FASMBS, FICS
Plastic and Aesthetic Surgeon

Liposuction is typically used to treat a pocket of stubborn fat like you've described. Without knowing more about the details of the procedure you had it's hard to explain why it wouldn't be effective. If you have gained weight the area can increase again in size.

I would still suggest liposuction on that area. You do not grow new fat cells and then ones removed stay gone. However, if you gain weight, that area will enlarge.

Based on the pictures you’ve shown, I don’t see any indication for Liposuction, unless you generally want both your arms to be more slim and have less subcutaneous fat.
I don’t see any significant evidence of a symmetry that would be well treated with Liposuction.
All people have a symmetry to a certain degree as baseline.
Upper extremity Liposuction can give spectacular results but the procedure is not easy to do well on a consistent basis. The results can easily be far less than people can hope for unless you find someone who truly has mastered this procedure. New paragraph for that reason I would say avoid Liposuction, unless you really want to have Liposuction for the purpose of having slim arms, in which case you need to start The process of finding the sufficiently experienced provider who can do upper extremity liposuction well on a consistent basis.
To do that schedule multiple in person consultations with providers in your community.
During each consultation, ask each provider to open up their portfolio and show you their entire collection of before and after pictures of previous patients Who had upper extremity liposuction.
And experience provider should have no difficulty showing you the before and after pictures of at least 50 previous patients.
Being shown a handful of pre-selected images, representing only the best results of a providers, career or liposuction of other anatomic areas is insufficient to get a clear understanding of what average results are likely to look like.
Liposuction results are permanent and irreversible. If done, poorly people can be left disfigured.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of provider selection when it comes to this procedure.
If your goal is only to improve symmetry, then don’t have liposuction.
Mats Hagström MD