Body Contouring - Things To Know

Hello,

I am Dr. Lalit Choudhary, senior consultant, Department of plastic and cosmetic surgery. Today I will discuss about the one important cosmetic surgical part which is body contouring. Body contouring comprises of almost 50% of the plastic cosmetic surgery procedures and if you count contouring can be anything from head to toe but most commonly the contouring if you see in the face, you can contour the wholeness of the face, you can fill with fat graft or you can do genioplasty or rhinoplasty with the increase or decrease in the size with the many fat grafts and fillers available in the market. We as a plastic surgeon prefer to have the autogenous tissue in which is fat, then we have breast augmentation and reduction procedures which is a subject in itself and we nowadays many patients are coming up with fat injection for increasing the size of the breast rather than you going for the implants. You may require 2-3 sittings but in the end, there is no cutting, there is only in aspiration of the fat within syringe and injection of the fat with injection.

Nobody in the future can make out if you ever had any surgical procedure, nobody. So that is important mostly for the patients like of the unmarried age or who are getting married again or patients who are afraid of foreign material like silicone in the breast. So that is an important point. Then we have abdominoplasty and liposuction. Liposuction has many myths like when you do liposuction then it comes back which is commonly seen in every other patient is asking about this question. So, it is important that there is nothing like that in liposuction. You take out a number of fat cells and the residual remaining fat cells will never ever multiply in number. It is not a tumor. These areas from where we do the liposuction those areas will have now only 30 to 40% of the cells left, 60-70% will be taken out, that is how the liposuction works. It is not a weight loss procedure. It is important that it's only a body contouring procedure. You lose some weight because you take out something which is secondary.

Then after a limit if you have a overweight status like in 120-150, then obviously you need a bariatric surgery and not a liposuction or a tummy tuck. Then the next is the tummy tuck. Tummy tuck is very important. It is not just gonna help you in contouring, it also helps in future because of change of the centre of gravity with the hanging apron which is taken care of. You have back pain, knee pain and other pains in the midline because of the tummy which is bloated and hanging down. So that is taken care of with a tummy tuck and then there is muscle plication done in the midline that gives strength to the midline of the abdomen muscle, a cross set of the abdomen. So, this is very important and it is one aspect so patient who are obese but not qualifying for bariatric surgery can have tummy tuck. Then patients who are not obese they can only for the cosmetic reason come, this is not the medical advantage of loss of girth and leading to advantage of back pain and the knee issues taken care of. Only cosmetics if you see that after 2 or 3 deliveries that is hanging lower abdomen commonly seen. More and more patients are coming after the second delivery for the tummy tuck.

Patients are asking for simultaneous tummy tuck during the cesarean caesars when they are getting it done, so it's very common now. So, these are the routine contouring procedures. They can be done in obese as well as after the bariatric surgery. After bariatric surgery you do contouring of head to toe of almost everything in the body, everything hangs down but they are the patients who need the bariatric surgery for the metabolic advantage. They are often associated with thyroid and blood pressure and diabetic issues. Many of them require less those or get corrected with the bariatric surgery. So, it is not that you can get away with the liposuction or tummy tuck by not and you can avoid a bariatric procedure so there is no fight. They are very defined zones in which we have to do either.

Thank you.