Tummy Tuck Information

Another story regarding patient safety and the importance of conducting extensive pre-surgical doctor screenings has come out, down under, in New Zealand.

New Zealand Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson has asked their national Medical Council to review a surgeon’s competence after a female patient complained about the services he provided.

The surgeon, known in the commissioner’s report only as “Dr. B” is a general surgeon who had trained in cosmetic surgery and worked at an outpatient cosmetic surgery practice.

In March 2006, the patient had abdominoplasty surgery – a procedure to get rid of the large amount of excess skin on her lower abdomen that was leftover after a previous liposuction treatment.

A couple of months after the surgery the woman developed a hematoma in her lower abdomen and ended up needing more liposuction treatments to remove the excess fluid and then further surgery to eliminate the hematoma.

In a post-surgery consultation with the surgeon in February 2007, the patient expressed dissatisfaction with the results of the tummy tuck surgery to the doctor. The doctor replied, saying that the excess skin was normal and in no way due to hematomas.

Independent advisers to the commissioner discovered that the surgeon did not provide appropriate standards of care which could be expected of a doctor who was a general surgeon who practiced cosmetic surgery exclusively. The commissioner recommended the cosmetic surgeon be referred to the Medical Council for a competency review.

According to Patterson, once the surgeon’s competency review is complete, a copy of the commissioner’s report will be sent to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and be available on the Health and Disability Commissioner website.

As medically-supervised weight management grows and changes, so does plastic surgery. Nearly 125 years ago, we saw the advent of the Tummy Tuck, the original body contouring procedure. Some 75 years later, came Liposuction and since then, a whole new crop of body contouring surgeries, such as the panniculectomy, have come and gone.

Today, weight-loss patients and specialists have a new plastic surgery procedure to consider: the Bra-Line Backlift.

The Bra-Line Backlift was developed by Dr. Joseph Hunstad, with the intention of treating excess back skin following massive weight-loss surgeries like gastric bypass. Following massive weight-loss, fatty tissue is suctioned out, using some light liposuction but the Backlift essentially is an upside down tummy tuck, on your back.

Instead of a horizontal incision across the waistline with a tummy tuck, the doctor makes an incision across the upper-middle back (one of the few detractors for men, given the inability to hide the scar with a bra or bathing suit), tightens the muscles and removes excess accumulations of skin.

Dr. Richard D’Amico, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons says that he sees this as more of a “completion procedure”, than anything else. A procedure that might conclude a mommy makeover, for example, as opposed to a primary treatment option.

After laying low in Europe for the last 3 months, following the birth of her and husband, Brad Pitt’s twins, Angelina Jolie and is back in the states, looking refreshed, healthy, well-toned and ready to promote her new movie, the Clint Eastwood film, Changeling.

Well-toned?! Yes, you read that right! Following the birth of the twins, Knox and Vivienne, the Hollywood star underwent exceptionally discrete tummy tuck surgery, durring her her self-imposed seclusion.

“Angelina looked drop-dead gorgeous in a tight black strapless Versace dress,” said a surprised eyewitness who saw the actress in attendance for the film’s premiere at New York City’s Ziegfeld Theatre with Pitt on Oct. 4. “My first reaction was, ‘Holy cow, how did she get so thin after having twins?’”

According to Star magazine, sources close to the family claim that Jolie was worried about the condition of her post-pregnancy body. Most mother-to-be’s think about this at least a little bit, but with twins on the way, Ms. Jolie was thinking about this a lot.

“She doesn’t like to talk about it or admit it, but Angie told some friends that she had a ‘mommy tuck,’ ” says a family friend. “She likes the way that sounds better than tummy tuck.”

In addition to the tummy tuck surgery, Ms. Jolie has been showing off some new tattoos to go along with her refreshed look as well: the tattoo contains geographic coordinates for the families new additions’ places of birth! In addition to attending the premiere, the Hollywood power-couple and family have also traveled to New Orleans as well.

August 20th, 2008. A Martinez, California woman was sentenced to 9 months in prison for identity theft, using another woman’s stolen credit cards to subsidize payment for a Mommy Makeover, consisting of a Breast Lift, Liposuction and Tummy Tuck.

Londie Bowman, 32, is scheduled to surrender to Marin County sheriffs in October, according to her public defender and a spokesperson for the courts. Bowman, scheduled the procedure for February but only had about $12,000, a little over half of the cost for the group of procedures, but it wasn’t until after she had them when her theft caught up with her.

After her procedure, a complimentary get-well bouquet was sent from the plastic surgeon’s office, Plastic Surgery Specialists in Greenbrae to the victim of the identity theft, Maija Lamberts. When Ms. Lamberts started asking questions about why she received the bouquet, the details of the theft came to light. When Bowman contacted the plastic surgeon to inquire about a lingering itch near her navel, local authorities were able to intercept her on a return visit to the surgeon’s office.

Los Angeles and Beverly Hills Area Tummy Tuck Procedures

After a woman has had a baby or gains tremendous weight, her stomach muscles often become stretched. That allows her tummy to sag into a pot belly. Most of the time, the tummy hangs over the beltline. But even the hardest exercises cannot return the stomach back to its normal shape. That’s when women in the Los Angeles and Bevelry Hills area go see a plastic surgeon about a tummy tuck, the surgical procedure to reduce a fatty stomach.

Los Angeles plastic surgeon Dr. Ivan Thomas offers a tummy tuck procedure known as the Beverly Hills Tummy Tuck. That procedure removes the woman’s pot belly and creates a flat stomach that is trimmer and more athletic than a standard tummy tuck. Dr. Thomas produces his special tummy tuck by taking longer and cross-stitching the stomach muscles back together. Additionally, he puts more stitches across the beltline and that pulls in the patient’s sides tighter. The operation also shrinks the patient’s waist in the front-to-back aspect and in the side-to-side dimension.

“Having a Beverly Hills Tummy Tuck is like wearing a tight girdle under your skin and squeezing the tummy in all directions,” says Dr. Thomas.

When looking for plastic surgery in Southern California, most people think of posh surgical suites in Beverly Hills or the world famous and prestigious medical facilities of schools like USC. The reality of the situation is that, while most of us would like to make a change in our appearance, usually in the form of a procedure like a tummy tuck, having your procedure done by a well-known “surgeon to the stars” just isn’t an option.

So what does one do? Give up? Visit some far off land, so your travel expenses eclipse the cost of your plastic surgery procedure? An easier solution could be to simply visit a plastic surgeon near but not in a major metropolitan area. For prospective patients in Southern California, simply making the trip down to a city like San Diego could be just the solution!

With all of the resources we have at our disposal nowadays, finding a plastic surgeon is as easy as turning on your computer. So why not look for someone like a San Diego Tummy Tuck specialist to have perform your plastic surgery procedure? You might be surprised by what options you have at your disposal!