Too old for a tummy tuck? Not if you are really healthy.
Seattle Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Lisa Lynn Sowder answers your questions.
Today I was asked “how old is too old for a tummy tuck”. Well, as with most about everything I do, it depends.
My oldest tummy tuck patient in recent memory was sixty-six and vigorously healthy, as in Danskin Triathlon healthy. She hated her lax skin and finally saw the dismal reality that one cannot exercise their lax skin away.
I did a tummy tuck (abdominoplasty) on her and she had an uneventful recovery. Her only regret is all that time she spent doing crunches!
So if you are a woman of a certain age and in excellent health, you are likely a good candidate for a tummy tuck. If on the other hand, you are obese, hypertensive and diabetic, it’s not worth the risk.
If you have a question about plastic surgery, shoot me an email (sowder@eplasticsurgeons.net) and I’ll try to blog about it.
Seattle Plastic Surgeon shares her dog toy wisdom.
My aussie/border collie/snapping turtle, Stella, just loves her Henrietta and Earl chew toys. Henrietta emits a high pitched squeal when chewed. Earl produces a realistic flatus-like sound. Stella, Henrietta and Earl make for some great hilarlity – for about 30 seconds.
Henrietta and Earl do, however, have some redeeming qualities in that they are very useful for obesity education.
Henrietta has a problem with external obestiy. Her excess fat is mostly external and distributed kind of all over – her hips, back, chest, upper thighs and tummy. This fat is unsightly but not much of a health issue.
Earl, on the other hand, has the dreaded internal belly fat. Earl, who has an inappropriately elevated level of self esteem, will say, “It’s muscle, not fat. Feel it, baby, it’s hard.” Well, it’s not muscle, Earl. It’s belly fat and it puts Earl at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, heart attack, etc.
Henrietta’s fat is best addressed with weight loss but it can also be addressed with breast and body contouring surgery. Earl’s fat on the other hand can only be addressed with weight loss. Surgery cannot remove Earl’s internal fat although Stella is doing her best to chew it off.
Thanks for reading! Easily asmused Seattle Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Lisa Lynn Sowder
Seattle Plastic Surgeon Reveals Some Very Shady Before and After Photos.
I get buried in advertisements for the newest, latest, greatest, you gotta have it, gizmos that are supposed to make my practice and my results and my life in general even better that they already are. Of course, these gizmos average about $100,000 and – this is what really fries me – they are rarely available for demo prior to purchase. This is sort of like buying a fancy new car without a test drive.
Another thing that fries me is some of the very, very misleading advertisements that many of the manufacturers try to pass off as real results. Here is an example. This is from an ad for a non-invasive fat removal system that uses energy that passes through the skin and is directed at the fat layer. Wow, what a difference until you look carefully. (Plastic surgeons are trained to look carefully.) In the photo on the right, Mr. Sixpack is pinching a fat roll that starts above his bellybutton and in the photo on the right, he’s pinching a fat roll that starts below his bellybutton. So obviously the more fat pinched, the thicker the roll. I can do this myself – big fat roll and little fat roll. I bet you can do it too!
Okay, and just one more thing that fries me, and then I’ll stop, at least until my next blog entry: Most of these new technologies are marketed heavily to non-plastic surgeons. The family practice doc or gynecologist or even (I’m not making this us) ophthalmologist who may want a little piece of the cosmetic surgery action may see this ad and go, “Wow, I must have one of these!” These docs are not experienced with liposuction or other body contouring and may not look at these photos as carefully as a real plastic surgeon. So these non-plastic surgeons buy one, it doesn’t work very well but they have to keep promoting it and using it and in some cases, giving patients a really raw deal because they have already dropped $100,000 on it and they can’t sell it because after a while, everyone knows it doesn’t work very well. So beware of non-plastic surgeons using the “latest technology”. They likely just don’t know any better.
I saw a patient in this week to have her stitches removed. I had removed a mole from her chin. She noted a little bit of bunching up of the skin on either side of her incision line and wondered if I had left a bit the the mole. What she was observing were dog ears. I have zero idea where the name came from but surgeons use the term all the time. Dog ears occur when a circular or elliptical incision is made to remove a lesion and a linear closure is done to close the wound. This causes the skin to bunch up a little at the ends. For those readers who sew, they will recognize this as being a lot like a dart in a shirt or dress. Happily most small dog ears flatten out on their own over time, as this patient’s certainly will. Larger dog ears that are sometimes seen after tummy tucks or breast reductions may not flatten out enough and need to be excised. This can almost always be done in the office with just a local anesthetic. The excision of the dog ear makes the incision and resultant scar a little longer but it is usually worth it for the smoother contour. Woof, woof.
Seattle Plastic Surgeon discusses the limitations of some of the newest, most expensive and most advertized gizmos.
Take a look at this “before” and “after”.
As promised, here’s the inside of the brochure that shows the “results” and you can be sure these are the best results the company could come up with. The “CoolSculpting” gizmo is promoted as a non-invasive body contouring procedure. I would say non-invasive and ineffective.
Most of the doctors that will purchase this device or one of the dozens similar to it are non-surgeons. These doctors do not know how to do an abdominoplasty (tummy tuck) so they offer this instead. I’m sure they go into it with high hopes but how can they not be disappointed at such a “result’? Once they have paid the $$$$$$ for the gizmo, they need to promote it to make sure they get a decent return on investment.
If any of my abominoplasty patients had a result like this, they would feel ripped off. I suspect the doctors using “CoolSculpting” are going to have some unhappy patients. Geez, everyone could have saved all that time, money and gnashing of teeth by referring those patients to me!
Seattle Plastic Surgeon discusses possible hazards of removal of superficial fat.
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about non-surgical fat removal using two different devices. One freezes the fat under the skin and the other zaps the fat with a laser than is focused under the skin. These two procedures basically kill the fat cells, they leak out all their fat and then the body removes the fat droplets, metabolizes and excretes the fat. Over weeks to months, the treated areas slim down.
Does that sound sweet or what??? But stop and think about it…………
The fat treated this way and with other techniques like liposuction, tummy tucks and body lifts is subcutaneous fat. It’s just the fat that resides under the skin and is harmless as far as overall health is concerned. Yeah, it’s unsightly and can get in the way but it’s harmless.
Visceral fat, on the other hand is bad news. This is the fat that is internal and encases and infiltrates the internal organs. This is the fat that causes the “beer belly” in many men and in some women. This is the fat that makes one an “apple” as opposed to hip and thigh fat that makes one a “pear”. Visceral fat produces all sorts of bad substances that lead to metabolic and cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Stay with me here. If subcutaneous fat cells are removed using fat removal methods and the patient gains weight, those fat cells are not around to enlarge and store the excess fat. Soooo….the amount of visceral fat may increase instead. A person may have slimmer hips or thighs or their love handles may be smaller, but their “beer belly” and all the health issues that go with a “beer belly” may increase.
It always bears repeating what I have been telling prospective patients for years. Liposuction and body contouring such as tummy tuck and lower body lifts is for patients that are at a healthy and stable weight. These procedures are not to be used as a substitute for diet and exercise. They are only for the left over, stubborn bulges and/or lax skin. Using these procedures as a weight loss tool will leave many patients disappointed and, if patients gain weight after surgery, at increased risk for obesity related diseases.
@lisalynnsowder
