How can I fix my abdomen after liposuction? Skin looks wavy with soft bumps..

Dear Kelly Pittsburg,
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

Thank you for your question and posing appropriate pictures. You seem to be a good candidate for revision liposculpture with ultrasonic VASER as well as skin tightening using Renuvion. It is best to have an initial virtual consultation to discuss options. Occasionally this may be performed under local anesthesia.

Thanks for trying to post photos but virtual consults much better... You have 2 options: #1. Re lipo using superficial lipo techniques with aggressive post op massages, fee $6,000. #2. Injections of combinations of Radeisse/Sculptra into dents to give appearance of smoother abdominal skin. About 2-3 sessions using 6-10 vials/syringes @ $3,000/session. #3. Combination of #1 . Again best to virtual consult with...

Delivering consistent quality liposuction and fed transfer results is more difficult than most people believe. This includes plastic surgeons. mastering body contouring to the point of being able to leave quality results on a regular basis takes years of experience and doing thousands of cases.
Liposuction is quite deceptive in that it looks easy but the reality is quite the opposite. Simply removing fat requires very little skill but doing so well is a different story.
Liposuction results are permanent and irreversible more or less.
The key with any procedure is the first get a clear understanding of what the underlying problem is and then apply the correct treatment. Individuals Who have bad outcomes from liposuction typically have had either too much fat removed or the fat was removed in an uneven manner or a combination of both.
Previously over treated patients are by far the most difficult to correct.
In your case luckily it appears that your surgeon was not overly aggressive and this makes your situation salvageable or hopefully at least partially salvageable.
Taking an even fat distribution, reducing it and leaving it even is hard enough. for example your surgeon was not capable of doing that. if you now take an uneven fat distribution and try to create an even fat distribution that is many times more difficult. The contour irregularities are completely lost during surgery because of fat is pumped full of a numbing solution. surgeons can only go by preoperative markings of where to remove fat and where not to remove fat.
To back up a bit the treatment options for poorly done liposuction generally come down to revision liposuction, fat transfer, a combination of the two and occasionally converting the procedure to a skin tightening operation like a full tummy tuck.
In your case revision Liposuction with potentially grafting some fat if there are individual areas that were significantly over treated is most likely your best option.
Consider that you’re starting with an uneven fat distribution and how difficult this procedure is to do well you should recognize that surgeons who like skill and experience can easily make things worse with an attempt at Revision Work.
Revision Work is much harder than primary Liposuction.
Technically your surgeon is responsible for the outcome and for taking care of complications including poor results. That said I don’t think your surgeon has the skill to do Revision Work well so you probably need to find a new provider.
These are my recommendations for choosing a plastic surgeon.
First start by looking locally and whenever possible avoid traveling long distances for surgical procedures. look for providers who seem to do a lot of the procedure you’re interested in based on their reputation, reading reviews and number of pictures on their website.
In your case you’re looking for plastic surgeons who do a lot of liposuction and fat transfer and seem to enjoy doing it.
Schedule multiple in person consultations avoiding virtual consultations whenever possible.
During each consultation ask each provider to show their entire collection of before and after pictures. Being shown a handful of 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. for primary procedures like abdominal liposuction or a BBL a provider should have no difficulty showing you at least 50 sets of before and after pictures. highly experienced surgeons will have hundreds or even thousands of before and after pictures for commonly performed procedures. Ask the provider to show as many pictures as possible of patients with similar body characteristics to your own. Preferred transfer work always confirm that after pictures were taken at least three months from the date of the procedure since early fat transfer results can look very impressive but do not at all represent final results. ask the provider to show examples of excellent outcomes, average outcomes and less than outcomes. we all have them and a confident, experienced and talented provider should not have a problem showing a variety of surgical outcomes.
Look carefully at the results for all areas treated to make sure there are no contour irregularities on the skin anywhere. ask the surgeon to point out area‘s treated in areas not cheated and look carefully at transition zones between treated and untreated areas.
Continue having consultations until you feel you found the right provider for your needs. When it comes to Revision Work you’re probably not gonging to find someone who has hundreds of before and after pictures to show you. Hopefully they will have some but generally speaking plastic surgeons who are really good at Liposuction and fat transfer will be the ones that are good at Revision Work as well.
Finally I recommend reading 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.
Plastic surgeons who do a lot of reconstructive surgery may have good experience with correcting the defects with fat transfer. I did a lot of fat grafting when I used to do breast cancer reconstruction and got my foundation in fat grafting from that type of work.
There are no non-surgical approaches to correct in your outcome and the only realistic option is revision liposuction with or without fat transfer.
Most plastic surgeons are typically not that good at Liposuction so your situation is unfortunately not unique.
Unfortunately the procedure is not taken seriously and given enough respect for providers to make the effort to learn how to do the procedure adequately if this was not done during their training.
Sometimes I describe poorly done Liposuction I comparing how children draw with crayons compared to how a professional painter paint the house. some plastic surgeons simply willy-nilly randomly start sucking out fat without any adherence to structured plan to confirm that the fat is removed in an even manor. Your outcome is a pretty typical outcome for someone who does not strategically approach Liposuction as something that requires a structured approach.
Best,
Mats Hagstrom MD