After months or even years of calorie counting and exercising, you’ve finally done what you once thought was impossible. You’ve lost weight, and it reflects in more than the number on the scale. You feel better—an accomplishment that you should be proud of.
While weight loss comes with many benefits, like more confidence and energy, you might find that it has its limitations. Some weight, especially in the abdominal area, just won’t budge, and may be accompanied by excess skin. It’s hard to take pride in your accomplishments when you still feel insecure about the area around your belly.
Cosmetic surgery in Tucson can improve the abdominal area, helping you achieve a more contoured appearance. Many people come to Larson Plastic Surgery for a post-weight loss tummy tuck, also known as an abdominoplasty.
To learn more about how this surgery can enhance your transformation, read this blog.
But First: Let’s Discuss Your Excess Skin and Fat
Your excess skin that hangs loosely from your body reveals just how much weight you lost. The skin and tissue expanded to fit your body’s growing size. Now that most of the fat is gone, this stretched skin can’t quite shrink back to fit your slimmer shape.
Excess skin is one thing, but the remaining stubborn fat can also take a toll on your self-confidence. Unfortunately, you can’t decide how and where your body stores fat; that’s already been predetermined for you by your genetics and hormones.
With this in mind, weight loss efforts don’t always work to improve the contour and look of your abdominal area. Instead, a surgical approach is required to remove the fat and excess skin.
What Is a Tummy Tuck?
Whether you call it a tummy tuck, mommy makeover, abdominoplasty, or belly cosmetic surgery, in Tucson, our team understands what your goals are. This surgery involves making an incision from hip to hip and around your navel. Next, the skin above your navel is pulled down, and excess skin and fat are precisely trimmed away. Before closing the incision, your surgeon will tighten weakened or separated abdominal muscles, and reposition your belly button for a natural appearance.
How Does Larson Plastic Surgery’s Tummy Tuck Stand Out?
Your plastic surgeon, Dr. Ethan Larson, uses advanced techniques and innovative technology to achieve optimal results. Not only is he a board-certified plastic surgeon through the American Board of Plastic Surgery, he is also a member of distinguished and reputable organizations, including:
- American Society of Plastic Surgeons
- Arizona Society of Plastic Surgeons
- American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery
- The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
Even with such an impressive resume, he continues his education, and recently studied in Chile with Dr. Stefan Danilla, a world-renowned innovator in body contouring and cosmetic surgery. There, he further perfected his techniques for body contouring, many of which he will apply to your belly cosmetic surgery in Tucson.
These techniques include fat transfer to muscles to enhance definition and provide stem cells to make them healthier and stronger, improved combinations of technologies to give you the best possible outcomes and advanced liposuction and body contouring practices to ensure you look and feel your best. These techniques are called RAFT, UGRAFT, SPARTAN and Tummy Tuck 4.0.
But don’t just take our word for it; you can see that Dr. Larson boasts high satisfaction rates on Healthgrades, Vitals, and Google.
You can see why he continues to earn such high ratings when you look through his before and after gallery. To understand how these results consistently turn out so well, let’s look at his methods and the devices he employs.
Innovative Technology
Dr. Larson believes that surgery doesn’t have to require a lengthy procedure and recovery time. Using advanced technology, he gently and effectively helps you achieve a contoured abdomen.
Vaser Liposuction
A tummy tuck may not always require liposuction, but when it does, Dr. Larson may use the Vaser Ultrasonic System. This noninvasive surgical device emits ultrasound energy to break up fat cells, aided by a medicated solution that is injected into the treatment area. This combination liquifies the fat, making it easier for the Vaser handpiece to suction it out of the treatment area—permanently—while leaving surrounding tissues intact. It can also help to tighten the skin after fat removal.
Renuvion
The goal of your belly cosmetic surgery in Tucson is to tighten abdominal skin, is it not? Well, we can’t think of a better technology to employ than Renuvion, the #1 trusted body contouring device used by surgeons. Renuvion uses radiofrequency (RF) energy and helium plasma to warm the skin and target collagen-rich tissue.
Collagen, the most abundant protein in your body, provides your skin with strength, structure, and support. Both age and weight gain can damage your collagen fibers, impacting your skin’s ability to conform to your new figure following significant fat loss.
Renuvion’s helium plasma and RF energy contracts those collagen fibers and tightens skin, giving you a smoother and more contoured appearance.
SkinTyte Laser by Sciton
After Surgery, Dr. Larson frequently employs some of the most advanced light and laser technologies, like SkinTyte by Sciton, to ensure that you get the absolute best result from your surgery as possible. The addition of laser light therapy after surgery can enhance your results to the next level.
Better Together
Just like how weight loss is easier with a combination of diet and exercise, your tummy tuck is better with Vaser, Renuvion, and SkinTyte together. After Dr. Larson expertly and gently removes fat deposits using Vaser liposuction, he inserts the Renuvion wand under your skin to target the collagen-rich tissue and tighten the skin in the treatment area. After treatment, you can return to our office for advanced laser and light therapy to further tighten skin.
Advanced Techniques
While these devices help to minimize your procedure length and downtime, Dr. Larson also includes specialized techniques to give you truly personalized results.
RAFT
Obesity can cause your abdominal muscles to stretch and separate, causing your stomach to protrude. This condition, known as diastasis recti, is a common concern among patients seeking a sleeker belly. Cosmetic surgery in Tucson tightens and repairs these muscles and improves your abdominal contour.
Dr. Larson utilizes an internal corset technique when treating this condition, known as Rectus Abdominis Fat Transfer—RAFT. This involves taking harvested fat from a donor area, and injecting it into a more desirable location of your body. Here, we inject the purified fat that contains stem cells rich with growth factors into your abdominal muscles to not only improve their appearance, but also strengthen them.
SPARTAN TECHNIQUE
SPARTAN stands for “Semilunaris Parallel to Rectus Fat Transfer”. This procedure will strengthen and define the obliques, which are the muscles to the side of the rectus abdominus. This results in better abdominal muscle definition and contour to greatly improve your final result by creating a more toned and athletic look. We can combine the SPARTAN with local anesthetic techniques to help ensure you have a nearly painless abdominoplasty.
TULUA Abdominoplasty
TULUA is a specialized abdominoplasty technique that targets the upper abdomen using liposuction. This approach doesn’t involve as much skin lifting or separating as a traditional tummy tuck. The TULUA requires a new belly button to improve the aesthetic results of your specialized surgery.
Hip Dip Corrections
“Hip dips” are the visible indentions that appear between the outer thigh and hip area. During your abdominoplasty, Dr. Larson may employ the use of fat grafting to smooth out the added indentation caused by hip dips to enhance your natural “S curve” and hip to waist ratio. He calls this the “Dip Flip!”
→ Want to learn how we use fat grafting for more than just abdominal contour? Read this article that explains how this surgical technique is used in a DIEP flap reconstruction surgery.
Important Considerations
Now that you understand how belly cosmetic surgery in Tucson works, let’s talk about some important factors to consider.
Not an Alternative Weight Loss Solution
You may have read about excess skin and fat removal and thought this might be a nice “jumping off point” to kick start your weight loss journey. While liposuction removes fat, it’s not a significant enough amount to be considered a weight loss technique. Instead, this surgery enhances the hard work and dedication you already put forth to lose weight.
Set Realistic Expectations
This surgery effectively contours your abdominal area, but it probably can’t turn back the clock to when you were 20. As you age, your body slows its production of collagen, making your skin lose some of its strength and support. Although Renuvion boosts the production of this vital protein, your skin may still show signs of aging and stretching post-surgery.
Scarring
Surgery requires incisions, and incisions cause scarring. We encourage you to look through our before and after gallery to get a better understanding of how scarring will affect your abdomen. Even though Dr. Larson does his best to strategically make incisions in places that are easy to hide on your belly, cosmetic surgery in Tucson may still result in visible scars. After you’ve recovered from your surgery, you can visit our nonsurgical aesthetics practice for scar diminishing treatments like microneedling or laser skin resurfacing.
Maintaining Results
You’ve done the work to lose weight, and you’ve undergone surgery to contour your body. Now, the duration of results hinges on your lifestyle choices and whether you’ve successfully adopted a new diet and exercise program. Gaining weight could undo the effects of your procedure, causing you to restart the process all over again. However, if you stay consistent with your new lifestyle, these results could last you a lifetime.
How Do I Start?
It all starts with a comprehensive consultation where you meet with Dr. Larson and discuss your desired outcome with this surgery. He helps you set realistic expectations and walks you through the steps he will take to help you achieve a sculpted and smooth contour. After this initial meeting, he will send you home with informational material for you to read through before your surgery. This will also contain pre- and post-care instructions, as well as a recovery timeline and expectations.
Before your surgery, you’ll meet with Dr. Larson for a secondary consultation so he can guarantee you are prepared for surgery and confident in your decision. Take this opportunity to ask any questions that may arise after your first session.
Weight loss leads you down a path to increased health and confidence. Don’t let anything diminish that, not even excess skin or a protruding belly. Cosmetic surgery in Tucson is your final step towards reaching your weight loss goals.
To get started, request a consultation to meet with Dr. Larson or a member of our team and discuss your post-weight loss journey.
To streamline the process, you can try our treatment planning tool. Once we receive your submission, a member of our team will reach out with available appointment times.
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