What Are The Chances of DVT and PE After Tummy Tuck?

Hi there-

As my colleagues have informed you, as long as you are having your tummy tuck performed by a surgeon Certified by The American Board of Plastic Surgery, in a facility accredited by the JCAHO or AAAASF, and with your anesthesia provided by a certified provider, your risk should be very low (on the order of 1% or less for DVT).

It is not possible to give you a better estimation of your particular risk without knowing a lot more about you- because it turns out that a lot of the risk factors for these complications have to do with the individual patient's health history, age, and the details of the surgery.

So the bottom line is that the best person to help you understand what your risk of this (and any other) complication would be is the Board Certified Plastic Surgeon you choose to do your surgery.

I utilize compression stockings and massage boots during all cosmetic surgery procedures.  When I admit patients overnight for an extended stay, I also place them on blood thinners to help prevent DVT's and PE's.

A large series of patients was studied and reported in our primary journal a few years ago, and the incidence of DVT (deep venous thrombosis) was reported as 1.2%, and the incidence of PE (pulmonary embolus) as 0.8%. These are low numbers, but are not low enough to ignore. These represent serious complications.

Certain factors add to the risk for an individual patient:


age greater than 40

use of oral contraceptive or hormone replacement therapy

surgery lasting over 30 minutes (all tummy tucks)

personal or family history of hypercoagulation disorders (blood clots too easily)


There are pathways that your surgeon can use to guide therapy to decrease your chances of abnormal clotting. The treatments include calf compression during surgery, and certain anticoagulation medicines, such as Lovenox. 

I have had two patients that that I now of who had problems like these, one with DVT and one with PE. It is likely that there were more that didn't have enough symptoms to lead to any evaluation which might have made the diagnosis. For example, my face lift patient that had a PE had only shortness of breath as a symptom, but an ultrasound of her legs revealed DVT as the source, but if she never had the PE, I would probably never have known about the DVT. 

For tummy tuck patients, I often, but not always, use Lovenox as an anticoagulant. I always use calf compression.