Body lift articles

As with any surgery, the body lift comes with possible complications and potential revisions as it lifts and tightens the entire lower part of the body. The good news is that most complications are relatively minor and can be handled post operatively in the office setting.

Plastic surgery doesn’t have to be painful. If you are having a cosmetic surgery procedure ask your plastic surgeon about pain pumps. These types of pumps use local anesthetics, not narcotics. Pain pumps eliminate pain, reduce nausea, and result in much quicker recovery. Watch my Cosmeticsurg blog to find out about why I think pain pumps in cosmetic surgery are great!

Some of you may have read my posts on why I like to do Breast augmentation under IV sedation. I also do IV sedation for all major and combined procedures. Naturally, some patients are anxious because they don’t want to feel anything, but they are attracted to the idea of not undergoing general anesthesia. There is also some confusion as to what exactly is IV sedation. This is understandable because there are many levels of sedation. I will explain the different levels so you can make a more informed decision when discussing this with your surgeon or anesthesiologist. In cosmetic surgery, we often refer to the three distinct choices: local,  IV or General anesthesia.

The Body Lift procedure removes excess skin which occurs after weight loss. Dr. Rodriguez, a Yale trained Plastic Surgeon has been performing the procedure for over a decade. Dr. Rodriguez performs all his body lift procedures in his AAAASF accredited surgery center in Baltimore, Maryland . Instead of General Anesthesia, he uses Twilight Anesthesia which results in much less nausea after surgery and a much faster recovery. Dr. Rodriguez explains the body lift procedure in this video.

A Lower Body Lift, or Belt Lipectomy is the combination of a Tummy Tuck, Outer Thigh Lift, and Posterior Buttock Lift performed in the same operative session. The ideal candidate for Body Lift has excessive amounts of skin. Getting the best results comes from taking out the right amounts of fat and skin. It is not proper to take out too much skin or too much fat. I believe that the Lockwood technique provides the best method for excising precisely the right amount of fat and skin.

The Body lift is a procedure which lifts and tightens the lower part of the body. The procedure is actually three separate procedures performed in the same operative session. The component parts of the Body lift are the Tummy tuck, the outer thigh lift and excisional butt lift. The average amount of time required for the Lower body lift procedure is 7-8 hours and it can be performed under general anesthesia or IV sedation. With the procedure taking so much time, you may ask “How safe is a Body lift?” Surgery has a variety of risks, but the choice of anesthesia for the Body lift can definitely reduce the biggest risk – the risk of pulmonary embolism, or blood clot to the lungs. With long procedures, 5-7% of patients develop pulmonary embolism with the use of general anesthesia. So, in order to completely eliminate that risk , I have been using IV sedation exclusively instead of general anesthesia for the past couple of years.

Dr. Rodriguez is offering a 10% surgical discount for members of the U.S. Military. Please note that discounts can not be combined with special promotions or already discounted surgery.

In all other branches of medicine, a treating doctor assumes that the patient has some kind of medical problem that the doctor has to fix or make better. If the patient experiences some pain, gets a big scar, or has some side effects, it’s an acceptable trade off because it’s for the patient’s benefit to attain…

I recently had an inquiry from “Kim A” about abdominoplasty techniques. She asks whether the procedure is called a “U-M” Abdominoplasty or the “W-M” procedure? Well, the lettering can be pretty confusing. Unfortunately, there’s a big movement in plastic surgery to give procedures catchy names so that they can be given an aura of uniqueness. What I think is more important is that the patient understand his/her options so they can pick the procedure most appropriate for them.

In 2006, I gave a lecture on the Body lift procedure to other surgeons in my hospital. In gathering the information for my talk, two things struck me when reviewing the literature published by other physicians. In summary, the current literature concluded that: 1) Surgeons are still reporting complications with the Body lift procedure. These complications include wound separations and seromas 2) Plastic Surgeons are still “learning about the procedure” My impression is that surgeons are having these problems because they do not use the Lockwood technique of body lifting. I use the Lockwood technique and feel very confident with the procedure and my results. Let me give you a brief history about the Body lift procedure, and how Dr. Ted Lockwood evolved the procedure.