Mommy Makeover Procedures Available
By Dr. Robert Bashore // February 19, 2012
EDITOR’S NOTE: This feature is courtesy of SpaceCoastMedicine.com Magazine – Brevard County’s most respected, most read health and medical resource for both consumers and healthcare professionals. To subscribe to SpaceCoastMedicne.com Magazine call 321-615-8111 or e-mail SpaceCoastMedicine@gmail.com
COSMETIC SURGERY
In a past edition of SpaceCoastMedicine.com magazine I discussed the fact that “Mommy Makeovers” are not new – just the name and popularity are. People are living longer and healthier and we all want to look as good as we feel.
Personally, having passed the 50 mark years ago, I can’t believe what time does to you. When I get up in the morning, I’m not sure who that old guy is in the mirror. I sure don’t look like I feel, at least in my own mind.
Time is not the only problem for women. They have to deal with the multitude of changes that can occur after pregnancy. We all can’t go through pregnancy with personal trainers, life coaches, and live-in Nannies like the Hollywood stars can.
Pregnancy can result in weight gain with fatty bulges in places we never knew we had. Some other examples are sagging bellies with stretch marks and breast volume loss called post partum breast atrophy.
This breast atrophy can even come with sagging – a deadly combination for the breasts in the young at heart. Breast enlargement is also a possibility in some individuals. Pregnancy can even lead to sagging in the pubic region, and individuals may become critical of areas they never paid much attention to, such as excess vaginal labial tissue.
Options By Body Area
A multitude of operations are available to correct all of these problems. No one surgery can fix it all. It requires a particular surgery to correct each problem, which must be tailored to the individual and their desires.
In other words, there is not one specific “Mommy Makeover.” That term is a marketing tool used to group available procedures into a general category for women only.
While some of the procedures are applicable to both sexes, obviously some are not.
• Breasts: Atrophy or volume loss is corrected with breast implants, which can be saline filled or silicone gel filled. There are three times more implants used to replace post delivery volume loss than for congenitally small breasts.
Sagging breasts are corrected with a breast uplift or Mastopexy. Usually this will also require an implant since the majority of women with sagging after pregnancy also have volume loss in the upper half of the breasts.
The less common, persistent enlargement of breast tissue after pregnancy may require a breast reduction, especially if it causes chronic pain. Variations or combinations of these procedures may be necessary especially if there is significant asymmetry in volume or sagging between the two breasts.
• Abdominal and Hips: There are only two basic options – Tummy Tuck or Liposuction. There are multiple techniques for each of these. Mini tummy tucks, full tummy tucks, and Fleur de Lis tummy tucks, etc.
They all remove skin by excision. This removes any looseness in the skin and any stretch marks contained in the removed piece of skin. Tummy Tucks have the added benefit of improving the look of the belly button and can elevate a sagging pubic area.
Likewise, liposuction has different modalities that can be used. But no matter which mode is chosen, all include at some point the traditional removal of the fat by suction or vacuum. Whether you use “Smart Lipo”, “Vaser”, or Ultrasound, one still needs the actual fat to be removed with a traditional liposuction vacuum machine.
Improving the appearance of the genitalia is the latest wave of surgery that comes from the West Coast. Labial skin reductions or Labioplasties have been around for a long time and are gaining popularity in recent years.
While this can be a functional surgery to correct problems associated with enlarged labia or asymmetries within the labia, it is now being requested for purely cosmetic reasons.
Like anything else, there are improvements in technique that come with increasing popularity of a procedure such as the vertical wedge reduction of the labia developed by Dr. Gary Alter in California.
Discuss Your Options
Needless to say, if one chooses to make a change, then it is imperative to discuss the options with your plastic surgeon. Yes, surgeon. The many nonsurgical procedures advertised in the media usually don’t work or have minimal effect and last a very short time.
Again don’t be sold on a procedure name and the hype associated with it such as “Lifestyle Facelifts ” or “Smart Lipo.”
Discuss the options with your plastic surgeon who can realistically tell you what works and what doesn’t. You can then choose what you want corrected and what you don’t. Then your “Mommy Makeover” has the best chance to give you the results you want so you can look like you feel.
Dr. Robert Bashore graduated from the Florida Institute of Technology and Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He was certified by the American Board of Surgery in 1985 and the American Board of Plastic Surgery in 1988. Dr. Bashore can be reached at 321-452-3882 or log on to BrevardPlasticSurgery.com
