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  • A Brand New You in Two Procedures: Breast Augmentation and Tummy Tuck
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For doing body rejuvenation, very commonly we'll do tummy tuck in combination with liposuction. Oftentimes, we'll even combine it with breast enhancement, and when we do it that way, people typically refer to that as a mommy makeover. That can be breast enlargement, breast lift, or a combination of both of those. With the tummy tuck itself, some people don't need liposuction, many patients do, and it's a real common adjunct to help try to get you the best results that you can for that procedure.

For a tummy tuck, with or without liposuction, the recovery's a common question that patients ask about. It's a thing that goes in stages. Basically, the first few days, people tend to take more pain medicine, and then they wean off of those pain medicines over the first week or two. As far as rigorous activity, strenuous stuff, running and jogging, lifting heavy weights, etcetera, you're restricted from that for several weeks, but you're doing most of your normal stuff, really, pretty much right after it, where you should be up and about walking. You should be able to reach and grab for normal things, wash your hair, be up and around, that type of thing.

There's some newer technologies that are available now in terms of medications that can help with the pain control, because that's a common thing that people really worry about is how much pain they're going to have afterwards. Some of the longer acting local anesthetics, that type of thing, can really help diminish the pain and diminish the amount of pain medicines that are needed afterwards.

Drains are really not that big of a deal. They're kind of a hassle, but if you can get by with fewer, or in many cases, no drains, it can be something that just makes your recovery a whole lot easier and just less hassle, and just makes the whole process a lot smoother for you. But I've reserved the right to use it if I feel it's going to be in their best interest, because, if you don't use drains in a case where you need drains, then you will tend to get fluid collection that you have to deal with, and that's the whole purpose of the drain. So even though they're a hassle, they have a good purpose, so I typically reserve the right, but I can usually predict with a pretty high degree of success, which patients would do better with a drain and which would do better without it.

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A Brand New You in Two Procedures: Breast Augmentation and Tummy Tuck

Dr. Hampton Howell explains the process of combining surgeries, namely body contouring procedures and the Mommy Makeover.