How to fix a Tummy Tuck

In my 25+ years of private practice plastic surgery, I have now done thousands of abdominoplasties, both for women and men. Very few, if any, plastic surgeons have done more in an entire career.

When evaluating a patient for a tummy tuck, you have to look at the skin, fat, and muscle, as well as the proportion to the surrounding anatomy and prior scars. After an abdominoplasty, you also have to consider what happened to leave the patient dissatisfied.

Sometimes, the problem is that the woman had a pregnancy after, creating the same problems as before. Sometimes, there has been another big swing in weight, either up or down, to create more laxity. In the rest, the surgery just wasn’t done optimally.

In certain cases of weight gain, a liposuction is all that is needed. In other cases, a full abdominoplasty needs to be repeated. The in between cases are the most challenging, and I believe I have solved many of them.

The modified abdominoplasty is a technique that leaves the belly button attached to the skin, and allows muscle tightening and skin and fat removal. When the initial scar is too high, and the belly button is high as well, both problems are corrected easily. The patient is flat, the high scar is lowered, and the umbilicus sits in the proper place.

While some plastic surgeons refuse to see other doctors’ unhappy patients, I do not. My basic instinct is to help, even if it means dealing with unhappy people. There is often, but not always, hope. I love tummy tucks, and I love my patients. What could be better?

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