American Society of Plastic Surgeons
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Zoe2200
2 years ago
Answered

Tummy Tuck

How safe it is to do a tummy tuck on a patient with a BMI of more than 50

Procedure: Tummy Tuck
Location: Pretoria, GT - South Africa

Replies 4

Debra Johnson
ASPS Surgeon

It would be a high risk procedure. Risks would include wound infection, hematoma, seroma, delayed healing, deep venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, myocardial infarction, and even death. I do not perform tummy tucks on any patient with a BMI over 35, and preferably below 30. Morbidly obese patients should consider bariatric surgery first to reduce the weight.

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Andrew Kornstein
ASPS Surgeon

Is it the right thing for you to do?

Perhaps start with an aggressive lipo with skin shrinkage(J Plasma/Renuvion) in order to reduce the surgical risk as well as allow time for diet to reduce intraabdominal fat stores which are extremely unhealthy and can interfere with an optimal abdominoplasty result.

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Daniel Allan

Dr. Johnson is correct. You should not consider any operation except a bariatric procedure-and a bypass will lead to greater weight loss than a sleeve gastrectomy. After your weight loss has stabilized, which will take more than a year, you can consider a panniculectomy to remove the redundant tissue.

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Rahul Vemula
ASPS Surgeon
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It would be an extremely risky procedure. You are exposed to complications around the time of surgery such as bleeding, heart attack, DVT / Pulmonary Embolism.

After surgery there is a significantly increased risk of surgical site infections, wound break down and seroma.

Overall the aesthetics of the procedure will most likely be suboptimal.

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