Best tummy tuck revision

That repair is a plication of the diastasis, the separation of the abdominal muscles. Redoing it means exposing the muscles again and tightening them so the pull above the navel matches the pull below it. Tightening only the lower half a second time would recreate the muffin top. The abdomen has to be even from the upper muscles to the lower ones.

A second irregularity is at the sides. The lower abdominal flank pouts, which is a dog ear. A dog ear is flank fullness made of skin and fat that the first operation did not take. It is not the muffin top, and it is not fixed by another plication. The photographs are one 51-year-old woman who was concerned with her abdominal scar and an infra-abdominal deformity. They show that those two issues were addressed. They do not label a muffin top or a dog ear on the print.

A deformed or scarred navel is described as the most common reason patients will not show the abdomen, and often the most prohibitive one. The navel that is wanted is an innie, with a shape that looks like a navel rather than a scar. That shape comes only from finding the umbilical stalk and insetting a new umbilicus on it. A scarred belly button that is painted over, without identifying the stalk, stays a scar.

A separate suboptimal result is a flat, bland abdomen with none of the highlights a natural belly takes from the muscle bellies. Muscle repair does not draw those highlights. They are made with high definition ultrasound-assisted liposuction, after the skin has been tightened enough to sculpt. Liposuction on a loose, high-scarred shell is not that step. The skin is lowered and tightened first.

A tummy tuck revision has to take on every botched piece that is present, because leaving one of them leaves the operated look. The muffin top needs the entire tummy tuck redone so the muscles can be exposed and the plication set evenly. A dog ear needs liposuction of the love handles and excision of the redundant skin, with the abdominal incision extended. When that redundancy continues across the back, the extension is a lateral thigh and buttock tuck.

The bland abdomen is the ultrasound-assisted pass, and only that pass creates the muscle-belly highlights. The high scar and the shelf are the incision revision that lowers the line and tightens the skin for that sculpting. The navel is the stalk and the inset. These are not substitutes for one another. A plication does not hide a dog ear. Extending the scar across the flank does not make an innie. Ultrasound-assisted liposuction does not lower an incision that sits above the undergarment.

Abdominoplasty is the operation being revised. The revision is still an abdominoplasty in the sense that skin, scar position, and muscle repair are surgical. It is not a liposuction touch-up of a finished tuck. Tummy tuck cost for a first operation is not the same line as a redo that exposes the muscles, lowers a scar, and may extend into a buttock tuck. The exam that assigns those pieces is done standing, at the tummy tuck locations, with the scar, the navel, the flanks, and the upper abdomen all visible.

A tummy tuck revision can be planned only after the cause of the deformity is named. An upper bulge from an uneven diastasis repair is not the same finding as a flank dog ear, and neither is the same as a scar that was sewn too high. The 51-year-old caption names an abdominal scar and an infra-abdominal deformity. Those are the high-line and shelf findings. They do not, by themselves, prove the muscles were tightened unevenly, and they do not prove the navel stalk was missed. Each of those is checked on the person.

The pubic enlargement that follows a high incision is skin and position, not a muscle problem. Lowering the incision and tightening into a smaller pubic triangle is the correction. If the upper abdomen still pouches after that, the plication still has to be redone, because the skin pull will not even out a repair that is tight only below the navel. If the sides still pout after the incision is lowered, the dog ear still needs love-handle liposuction and a skin extension, including across the back when the redundancy goes that far.

Highlights come last, and only where the skin is tight enough to show the muscle bellies. High definition ultrasound-assisted liposuction is that last sculpt. It does not replace the plication, the scar lowering, or the navel inset. A bland abdomen that never gets this pass stays flat even after the muscles and the scar are right. An abdomen that gets the pass before the skin is tightened shows the cannula work through a loose shell.

A tummy tuck is a skin excision and a muscle repair. The revision uses those same parts, aimed at the piece that failed. Mayo Clinic describes the operation as removing extra skin and fat and restoring weakened muscles, which is the pair this revision still has to get right: skin and scar in the right place, and muscles tightened evenly. The navel is inset on the stalk so it is an innie. The dog ear is skin and fat at the flank, taken by excision and liposuction, not by another uneven plication.

Standing is how those other findings are separated. The upper abdomen is compared with the lower abdomen. If the upper pouch remains when the skin is pulled smooth, the diastasis repair is the problem, and the whole tuck is redone so the muscles can be tightened evenly. If the pouch flattens when the skin is lifted, and the sides still pout, the dog ear is skin and fat at the flank. Love-handle liposuction and a longer incision, carried across the back when the redundancy goes there, are the correction. The navel is judged on its own: an innie inset on the stalk, or a scar that still needs that inset.