S. Larry Schlesinger, MD, FACS has performed more than 2,000 tummy tuck procedures. What he has learned is that 1. All tummy tucks require liposuction and 2. Liposuction is best done after the tummy tuck surgery. In this video, he explains why.
Hi, I’m Larry Schlesinger, and I’m a board-certified plastic surgeon from Honolulu, Hawaii. Everyone that does a lot of tummy tucks knows that you’ve got to do liposuction. If you do liposuction before you do the tummy tuck, you set up a lot of scar tissue which increases your chances of getting seromas and hematomas with the surgery. That’s not very clever. Because liposuction can sometimes injure skin because tummy tucks can sometimes injure skin, you put the two together and you have to under- do in order to not injure skin and get some death or necrosis of a couple millimeters of skin so, the safest thing to do is to do the liposuction after the tummy tuck. And I find that if you do it 90 days after, you’ve completely redirected the blood supply, you have a much stronger flap, which is the skin and its blood supply if you do your liposuction at 90 days or later. Thank you very much.