What is Tummy Tuck?

Hi my name is Dr. Effie Politis with Politis Plastic Surgery.

Tummy Tucks are one of our most popular procedures so most of the patients are candidates for abdominoplasty or tummy tucks. Very few are mini tummy tuck candidates, the patients have usually had one or two or three children we advise that they perhaps finish having children prior to undergoing a tummy tuck. We want them to be at their ideal weight so BMI of under 30 is ideal typically the best patients are around 25 to 26 to get the best results. And we want to examine where their fat is so the fat I can remove and the skin and fat is from their lower abdomen below the belly button. And again it has to be above their abdominal wall or their rectus muscles. So some women carry a lot of their fat intra-abdominally and those aren’t good candidates because we’re making minimal change to their body habitus, but if they can lose that weight we can remove the skin, again from below the belly button, we do reposition the belly button with this procedure, but most of the skin and fat is from the lower area the scar sits very low usually in their bikini line. So the recovery in a tummy tuck or full abdominoplasty usually with lipo contouring of the side is around four to six weeks. By six weeks the patients are back to more rigorous activities and exercises, but remember with our enhanced recovery protocols multimodal anesthesia and analgesia, they really are feeling good within the first three weeks, but we actually have to refrain the patients from getting back to their exercise routines until four to six weeks