What procedure is this? More than just a tummy tuck?

Hi, thank you for sharing your question. While it’s hard to say exactly what this patient had done, it may be a standard tummy tuck or a combination of tummy tuck with reverse tummy tuck. Most patients will have excellent results with standard tummy tuck.

Dear Nicole Hathaway,
it is hard to tell for sure, but it looks like the patient had a full tummy tuck. If you are considering surgery, I would suggest you consult a board-certified plastic surgeon. Only after a thorough examination, you will get more information and recommendations.
Daniel Barrett, MD
Certified, American Board of Plastic Surgery
Member, American Society of Plastic Surgery
Member, American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery

A breast lift will often lift the upper abdominal skin but you cannot tell if she had one performed since she is wearing a bra. The technique I recommend for a lift is The Bellesoma Method. This will reshape your breast tissue creating upper pole fullness without implants, elevate them higher on the chest wall and more medial to increase your cleavage. Vertical scars are avoided, nipple sensation (in 95%) and the ability to breast feed are maintained. At the same time, a tummy tuck can be performed. If you are not planning future pregnancies, I recommend abdominoplasty with mesh reinforcement. The mesh creates a more hourglass figure by compressing the abdominal wall resulting in early satiety and helps maintain a reduced weight.

Best Wishes,

Gary Horndeski, M.D.

There are multiple tummy tuck techniques. And based on the photo, I’d say that the patient had a standard tummy tuck. This technique tightens the entire abdominal wall – from just above the pubic bone all the way up to a little below the breast bone.

I’d also say that the patient combined her tummy tuck with a liposuction. The two often go hand in hand since liposuction can improve the body contour by eliminating excess fat around the abdomen.

Good results like this can be obtained with a tummy tuck or a vertical tummy tuck if there is a lot of upper abdominal skin.

From the photos it appears this patient had a full tummy tuck with liposuction for contouring. If you are considering surgery I encourage you to schedule a consultation with a board certified plastic surgeon near you. At this visit you can discuss your surgical goals and a unique surgical plan can be created with those goals in mind.

The amount of skin tightening from this procedure depends on the extent of surgery. during the operation surgeons separate the skin and fat layer from the muscle fascia of the abdomen. We usually call this process undermining. It’s typically done with an electric scalpel called Bovi or electrocautery.

Typically undermining is done up to the rib cage. For patients who have a skin fold on the lower part of their chest below their breasts the skin attachments that create that skinfold need to be released by undermining up onto the rib cage almost all the way to the inframammary fold or bottom of the breast. Undermining also needs to go out laterally to get more skin separated to get the tightening affect. Extensive undermining can potentially increase complication rates. The extent of this varies from surgeon to surgeon and from patient to patient or at least it should.

Doing excessive inexensive undermining on an obese smoker is almost a guarantee for having massive wound healing complications. For a healthy low BMI patients it can be done routinely and safely.

For patients who have skin folds on the lower chest or upper abdomen it’s very important to discuss exactly how far the undermining will go during the consultation so patients and surgeons are on the same page of what to expect after the procedure.

The pictures you’ve showed should be standard results from a well done full tummy tuck for that patient.

Undermining it’s almost always limited to the sides to some degree.

While this is a technical conversation how are the operation itself is performed the topic needs to be clearly conversed prior to surgery for patient to have correct expectations.

I’ve seen plenty of times where patients had insufficient undermining leaving them with skin folds under their breast on the lower chest or upper abdomen. Those results could’ve been much improved had to surgeon simply undermined a little further.

After the fact there is very little options to improve the outcome other than redoing the entire procedure or adding a reverse tummy tuck which tends to be unfavorable in regards to scarring.

I recommend patients have multiple in person consultations at which time expectations including the review of as many before and after pictures as possible is done thoroughly and in detail.

Best,

Mats Hagstrom MD