Having strange ligament type tightness in neck, never had before. 5 weeks post op smart lipo. Is it normal? (Photo)

I have seen this same condition or what looks like it develop after liposuction of the neck. It was also from Smart lipo, though I seriously doubt the laser had anything to do with the development of the tight band. Like yours, it also developed several weeks after the procedure. I spent quite some time doing research and thinking about what it could be. For the patient to whom I'm referring, the band was tight and felt like firm scar tissue, almost tendon-like.It slowly got better over time, though it took months. After going through all the possible causes, my conclusion was that my patient had a condition called thrombophlebitis.Thrombophlebitis is the medical word for inflammation of a vein caused by a blood clot. Most of us have heard of blood clots in veins as being dangerous. Those are called DVTs, or deep venous thrombosis. That is a very different condition in that a DVT can be life-threatening. When the same condition happens in small veins just underneath the skin, we refer to it as superficial thrombophlebitis. It generally goes away by itself. That area can feel a little bit warm and be tender to touch. With time, it will either slowly open up and go back to normal or become scar tissue, which eventually seems to shrink down and almost disappear. In some ways, it's similar to how varicose veins can be treated for cosmetic reasons. When we do a procedure called sclerotherapy, we inject a poison to purposely cause a clot to form in a vein. At the same time, we put pressure on the vein to have as little blood in it as possible while the blood clot forms. With time, the body absorbs the vein, and the varicose vein disappears.I realize that this is a lengthy discussion that's veering off topic a bit. Of all the other things I thought about, none of them seemed plausible. Why would scar tissue develop into one straight line of that length? Muscle spasm makes no sense at all. You'll know if you have a muscle spasm because your muscle will be spasming heat energy. The muscles rarely cause this type of contraction, or at least I've never seen it. Best of luck,Mats Hagstrom, M.D.