6 months post op lipo on my flanks and upper and lower stomach. Area is dented and lumpy. Can this be fixed? (photos)

Question

I am 6 months post op and mortified with my results. I had lipo on my flanks and upper and lower stomach. Before surgery I had a smooth flat stomach. Now it is dented and lumpy. At my follow up appointment I was told to give it more time and it will improve. It hasn’t improved. I went to a board certified Surgeon that has 20 years of experience, so how did I end up with these results and is there any way to fix the damage? The first 3 pics are before lipo and the last 3 are 6 months post op

Gerald Minniti, MD, FACS · Answer

You have severe scarring from trapped fluid collections after the liposuction. This is the main reason why post surgical ‘lymphatic’ massage can be helpful. At this point, you are far beyond a revision liposuction surgery to smooth you. I’m terribly sorry to inform you that only a tummy tuck will improve this. To make matters worse, this would be a higher risk surgery than a normal tummy tuck, because releasing the scar tissue can devascularize the tissues, leading to poor wound healing and tissue injury. However, one way to minimize this risk is first having Qwo injections followed by massage of the abdomen. A few sessions over the course of 6 months should relax a lot of the distortion and contraction of skin. Qwo is an aesthetic product FDA approved for the reduction of cellulite. It is essentially and enzyme that can break down collagen, the main component of scar tissue. I’m just starting to have patients like you use this prior to their tummy tuck, so I can’t tell you if it makes the surgery easier or safer yet. It just seems logical that it would. Best of luck. I’m terribly sorry that you’re in this situation, but there is hope. One of my patients posted her results in the review section of my page on Realself.

Daniel Barrett, MD · Answer

Dear tmariew82,
I understand your concern. However, without a proper assessment, it would be difficult to determine what went wrong. It is best that you visit your plastic surgeon for further assessment or ask for a second opinion. Only after a thorough examination, you can get proper recommendations and advice.
Daniel Barrett, MD
Certified, American Board of Plastic Surgery
Member, American Society of Plastic Surgery
Member, American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery

Camille Cash, MD · Answer

I'm sorry you've had such poor results from your liposuction.  You may be able to consider a tummy tuck to improve the contours, but tissue survival will be a risk.  Massage of the area may give conservative improvement.

Darryl J. Blinski, MD · Answer

This demonstrates in your posted photos over lipo reduction. Plus was energy liposuction use like a Vaser? Only option is a skin only TT fee $10,000. Best to virtual consult with….

Mats Hagstrom, MD (license on probation) · Answer

I have answered well over 10,000 posts on this website relating to Liposuction.
I am also a Liposuction expert who focused my carrier exclusively on Liposuction procedures 12 years ago. I’ve been a board-certified plastic surgeon for 22 years and 12 years ago I gave up all other surgical procedures and began focusing exclusively on only Liposuction and fat transfer.
When you do the same thing over and over you start noticing certain patterns and things start becoming more consistent.
There are many things I’ve learned over the years but one of them is just how hard it is to deliver quality liposuction results on a consistent basis. The second major observation is that most plastic surgeons are not particularly good at doing liposuction.
Simply doing Liposuction is quite simplistic and can literally be done by anybody with a medical license. This leads to many plastic surgeons to somehow not recognize Liposuction as a procedure that is difficult to master and doing so requires years of experience with a commitment to improving your technique.
My best analogy is watching children draw pictures.
If you watch a six year old with a box of crayons and a coloring book you’ll notice that they color in areas with random hodgepodge motions without any predetermined structural or methodical method.
This is a bit how most plastic surgeons do liposuction. They simply randomly liposuction all over the place like a six year old drawing with crayons. you don’t have to go very far to see exactly what I’m referring to. Go to any YouTube video watching plastic surgeons do liposuction and look to see if they are following a consistent pattern of removing fat or does it look more like random sucking at fat going back-and-forth up and down all over the place without any particular plan in mind. 
If you then compare that to a professional painter who will first prepare a room or house for being painted by taping off all trim then starting in one corner painting row after a roll slightly overlapping until the entire wall, house or whatever is being painted is finished.
This is my best way of avoiding medical jargon to explain why poor Liposuction results look the way they do and why there is such a massive divergence of outcomes for this one procedure.
I’ve never seen a surgical procedure that has the degree of variance in outcomes that Liposuction has.
What you described is unfortunately not uncommon.
The truth is most plastic surgeons are not particularly good at liposuction and they don’t take the procedure seriously so they never bother learning how to do it right or improve upon their technique.
You will also find the same providers to come up with 1 million excuses and never take ownership of the outcome.
The most common excuse is blaming the patient.
The truth is your plastic surgeon does not know how to do liposuction well and should never do liposuction again.
I would encourage you to write honest and professional reviews on major physician review websites describing your experience. I’m sure you would’ve appreciated if others would have done the same for you when you were choosing your provider.
Unfortunately Liposuction is a permanent and more or less irreversible procedure.
Revision liposuction or correct in poor outcomes is extremely difficult and the amount of improvement is often limited. to correct poor outcomes plastic surgeons typically employer revision liposuction, fat transfer, a combination of both or converting the procedure to a skin tightening operation like a full tummy tuck.
None of those procedures are going to restore your abdomen to the way it looked before surgery or make it look acceptable. there’s always room for some improvement but doing revision work is many times more difficult than primary Liposuction so anyone considering having more surgery to correct poor Liposuction results needs to seriously do some research into finding the most talented and experienced provider for this procedure in their community.
My recommendations for patients interested in liposuction and this also to some degree goals for revision work is the following.
I recommend patients always rely on in person consultations avoiding virtual consultations whenever possible. I also recommend patients avoid traveling long distances for elective surgical procedures though there are times when local talent simply isn’t there and travel becomes necessary.
During each consultation ask each provider to show their entire collection of before and after pictures. Being shown a few sample pictures which most likely represent the best results of the providers career is insufficient to get a clear understanding of what average results look like in the hands of each provider. ask providers to show you as many pictures as possible of patients with similar body characteristics to your own. You may want to ask the provider to show you examples of excellent outcomes, average outcomes and less than outcomes.
An experience provider should have no difficulty showing you at least 50 sets of before and after pictures of common procedures like abdominal liposuction.
On my telephone I have a folder labeled abdomens that has 1602 sets of before and after pictures. that folder only represents a small fraction of the abdominal liposuction cases I have performed over my career.
Experienced surgeons should have hundreds or even thousands of before and after pictures of commonly performed procedures.
Look carefully at all areas treated looking for any evidence of skin contour irregularities or evidence of looking like someone has had liposuction. Ask the provider to review the pictures with you and ask them what areas were treated and what areas were not treated and look carefully at transition zones between treated and untreated areas to make sure transition zones look natural.
For those who need revision work this needs to also include providers who can show competence with fat transfer since that is a common method of correcting Liposuction mistakes. improving a bad outcome from previous over aggressive poorly done liposuction often requires multiple rounds of fat transfer making gradual improvements with each procedure.
Finally I recommend patients read all reviews on various physician review websites avoiding providers with any significant number of justified negative reviews. The absence of justified negative reviews is more important and more telling than having an abundance of positive reviews.
Continue having consultations until you feel certain you found the most talented provider for your needs.
There is no set number of consultations needed since there’s some randomness to stumbling upon the right provider.
It’s not possible to find the ride provider sitting in front of a computer screen.
I would say five consultations is probably an absolute minimum and for some individuals it may require many more.
Patients need to be advocates for themselves and properly vet plastic surgeons. this means taking an active role during the consultation and asking to see pictures other than what is present it to you.
I’ve been committed to helping patients avoid disfigurement by giving advice like this post for a number of years. I don’t answer questions on real self to try to build clientele but instead my primary motivation is to help protect the public from incompetent providers doing bad surgery. what happened to you is unfortunate but what’s more unfortunate is how common these type of outcomes occur.
Your best option is probably trying to negotiate to get all of you or some of your money back from your provider.
It’s not uncommon for plastic surgeons to ask patients to sign a release of liability forms whenever giving it a full or partial refund. these often include restrictions on writing reviews.
I wish I had a better solution for your problem but unfortunately your situation is extremely difficult to correct. At six months your results have been final for quite some time and giving it more time will not change anything in regards to your results. liposuction results are fairly close to final by six weeks and patients will not experience any change after three months. Plastic surgeons are notorious for over exaggerating how long it takes to heal from Liposuction as an excuse to avoid acknowledging their own bad work.
Best,
Mats Hagstrom MD

6 months post op lipo on my flanks and upper and lower stomach. Area is dented and lumpy. Can this be fixed? (photos)

Answers (5)

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