What is Abdominal Skin Tightening?
By David Reid | Published on December 1, 2009 | 0 Comments
Board certified in the field of plastic surgery, Dr. David S. Reid works at New Dimensions Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery in Belleville, Illinois. He graduated from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and completed a residency in plastic surgery at Walter Reed Medical. He has been in private practice since 1995. In this piece, Dr. Reid explains why many bariatric patients choose to have abdominal skin tightening procedures done as a follow-up to their weight-loss surgery.
To understand why bariatric patients would choose to have abdominal skin tightening done, you first have to understand what bariatric surgery really is. For those who don’t already know, bariatric surgery refers to the surgery that is done in order to help someone lose weight. Typically, these bariatric surgeries are done on people who have at least 100 pounds of weight or more to lose.
These bariatric surgeries are done by general surgeons and not plastic surgeons. So during this initial surgery, a patient may have a stomach bypass or an intestinal bypass. So the patient will have his stomach stapled during that initial surgery performed by a general surgeon.
What happens when someone has bariatric surgery is that he loses a dramatic amount of weight. When someone loses a hundred pounds or more in a short period of time, though, it is common that the skin of the body won’t necessarily go away as quickly, or at all. So the skin will look somewhat loose and unsightly, especially around the stomach area for a lot of these patients.
By coming in for a post-bariatric abdominal skin tightening procedure, patients can get that skin tightened and taken care of. Only then can people really see how much weight they have lost, and that is a big thing for a lot of people.
This really is a procedure that is simply a variation on a tummy tuck. It is performed similarly to a tummy tuck, on the part of the surgeon, but additional special considerations need to be addressed at the same time. That makes a post-bariatric abdominal skin tightening a little more complicated than just a regular tummy tuck.
Obviously bariatric patients need to come in after they have lost weight from their surgery, but they shouldn’t come in too soon. Coming into my office three months after undergoing bariatric surgery, for example, would be too soon for most patients.
At a minimum, patients who have undergone bariatric surgery need their weight to remain stable for three to six months after their initial weight loss. Obviously, the specifics of this will vary based on how much weight they lost and whether they intend to lose even more, but those are just some general estimates.
Additional considerations on the part of the surgeon remain as well, since these patients pose additional risks. A plastic surgeon performing a post-bariatric abdominal skin tightening procedure should be sure to find out where his patients’ vitamin levels are, and make sure that patient’s blood count is where it should be.
If all of those things look good, then a patient is ready to go forward with the post-bariatric abdominal skin tightening procedure. And, like I said, this can be a procedure that majorly impacts the lives a lot of patients who have had bariatric surgery.
Tags: abdominal skin tightening, bariatric surgery, skin tightening
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