Abdominal Lipo AFTER a Tummy Tuck?

The results of tummy tucks vary with your pre-operative weight, body shape, degree of skin laxity and muscle laxity.  The best results are seen in those with ideal body weight with no intra-abdominal or extra-abdominal fat and only loose skin and muscles.  If this does not describe your situation, then a traditional tummy tuck alone is less likely to restore the feminine "hour-glass" figure that most patients desire.  This happens because tightening of the muscles pushes intra-abdominal fat (fat around the organs) up towards the top of your abdomen and out to the sides making your waist line square.  When these findings are present before surgery, then one should consider adding liposuction to a tummy tuck to enhance the results by removing additional extra-abdominal fat.  The lipo-abominoplasty is the procedure that combines these two procedures with excellent results in the ideal patient performed by an experienced surgeon.  Alternatively, liposucton can be performed after a tummy tuck to further enhance your body contour if there is still fat under the skin.  Skin laxity and contour irregularities are less likely to be a problem for you because the skin has been tightened by removing the excess at the first procedure.  Hope this helps!

You've raised a very good question with regards to tummy tuck surgery. It is a point that I always cover with my patients pre-operatively. I am comfortable liposuctioning the flanks and mons pubis area during the tummy tuck surgery, but I am not comfortable with liposuction of the upper central abdomen (unless it's to create the median raphe only). I think it adds to increase risk of poor wound healing and potential tissue necrosis. For surgeons who can liposuction the mid-abdomen aggressively and not have a complication, I extend my admiration. But for patients and surgeons who have to deal with the resulting complication, it is a huge problem. So for patients with a thicker mid-section, I will often recommend a safer two-stage procedure. Three to six months after the tummy tuck procedure, return to aggressively liposuction the central abdomen, flanks, hips and/or back area. I wouldn't be too concerned about having loose skin again (of course, I don't have pictures to see). I think your surgeon made a prudent decision.

There are two differing schools of thought regarding combining liposuction with abdominolasty surgery.

Some surgeons believe that performing these two elements at the same time may increase the risk of wound healing and other complications. I agree that this can be the case when performing "wide undermining" of the skin.

Other surgeons will argue (myself included) that one can safely combine liposuction and abdominoplasy my modifying the way the abdominoplasty is done. In fact, a "lipoabdominoplasty" does just this. In our experience, we have achieved excellent results with lipoabdominoplasies and no increase in complication rate.