Plastic Surgeon at Support Group

Last night I attended a support group and the speaker was Dr. Richard Lee, a plastic surgeon based in Newport Beach, California. If anyone has had work performed by him, I'd love to hear your comments.

Some of the points he made last night:

• He performs around 200 plastic surgeries per year and 30% of his patients are bariatric
• Because our skin is abnormally stretched, any type of PS performed is more intricate and complicated than on a "normal" patient
• He doesn't require that bariatric patients wait a certain amount of time after they reach their goal weight before they have PS, but he does require that their BMI is less than 30
• If you have a low hanging panni, a normal tummy tuck will not give you the results you want.  He recommends a lower body lift instead.

One of his patients who just had a tummy tuck, breast lift, batwing reduction and face lift (not on the same day!) was in attendance.  I've known her previously from the support group and she was very positive about the experience.  She looks pretty good, but could barely turn her head.  I guess it take a long time for the swelling to reduce from PS.

He also showed several before/after photos, including those from bariatric patients.  I came away from the experience feeling optimistic that I won't have to live with the ravages of excess skin forever.

Just my opinion, based on my own experience, the experiences of people I know IRL, and comments by my PS...

It sounds to me a bit like he is trying to "upsell" people from a tummy tuck to a LBL.  Sure, a LBL almost always will look better (except the scars, of course) than just a TT, but just because you have a large pannus doesn't mean that you NEED a LBL to look good. It really depends more on how much excess skin you have everywhere besides your pannus than on the pannus itself.  

For someone like me who had his/her belly hanging down on the thighs, but had a very average to small amount of excess skin on the hips and backside, a LBL is really overkill (especially when you consider the cost difference). I am starting to notice that what is left of my butt is starting to sag, but am 7 years post op and I think that has more to do with my age (almost 52) than my weight loss.

It really IS important, IMO, to get a PS who has experience with "our people" because our skin really can be significantly damaged and there are special challenges involved.

My TT incision turned necrotic as a result of poor circulation and too many midline incisions, and it took 5 months for it to heal despite the surgeon's experience with poor skin (but it did, of course, heal!), but a "regular" plastic surgeon told me that I should consider something less "traditional" like a two incision tummy tuck where there would be an incision on each of my sides (in order to use better skin along incision lines), but that would have meant leaving the most stretched, marred skin on my belly and pulling everything out sideways!!!

Lora