Before and after post-weight loss body contouring in a 26 year old woman. After a gastric sleeve procedure, she lost 180 pounds. She had adopted a healthy lifestyle and had kept a stable weight for two years. She was limited in her ability to exercise due to her abdominal overhang (pannus). She felt she had given herself a new lease on life with her weight loss surgery and lifestyle changes, and she wanted more than nothing for her body to reflect that.
A circumferential body lift removed her abdominal pannus in the front and excess tissue from her flanks and her backside. She already had a large scar over her right buttock from excision of a large tumor as a child. The excision of tissue removed nearly 17 pounds of excess skin and fat from circumferentially around her body. Liposuction removed nearly 7 liters of fat from her abdomen, flanks, pubic region and lower back.
She stayed overnight in the hospital and had drains in for a full month after surgery. It is expected that following weight loss surgery, particularly when absorption of food is not normal, healing can be slow, the body will make exponentially more wound fluid with drainage from the wounds for several months, and that infection risk and wound breakdown rates are higher.
However, the reward to this patient population is also exponentially higher often than the average non-massive weight loss patient. Simple things like fitting into a booth in a restaurant, comfortably sitting on an airplane in coach, and being able to shop for clothes at a regular store are some of the activities of daily living that our weight loss patients thank us for helping them achieve after surgery.
Her wounds indeed took several months to heal, requiring packing several open areas with gauze until they healed on their own from the inside out. Scars were dark for several years, as her body produced melanin while she was healing. Post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation is common after any surgery and can last for a long time when healing is delayed.
Follow up photos are shown at two and half years after surgery.
*All photos are actual patient photographs and are for illustrative purposes only. Individual results may vary.
