DR. RICARDO L. RODRIGUEZ
Board-Certified, American Board of Plastic Surgery
Founder, Ricardo L. Rodriguez MD, Baltimore Plastic Surgeon
Medical Director, Cosmetic Surgery Facility, LLC
In his articles about Body Contouring procedures, Dr. Ricardo L. Rodriguez, Baltimore Plastic Surgeon, discusses Tummy Tuck, Body lift, and Liposuction techniques, incision placement, compression garments, and recovery.
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.
How do you achieve a flat stomach? Do you need more exercise or a Tummy tuck? Find out about the rectus abdominis muscle and how to perform a self examination of this muscle.
n this video I discuss the difference between two types of liposuction: tumescent (suction) liposuction with suction assisted cannulas vs. laser/ultrasonic assisted liposuction. Both of these techniques remove fat, but they differ in technique and results.
In the Liposuction procedure, the cannula is the long slender rod which is used to extract fat from unwanted area. I will explore the evolution of the liposuction cannula and discuss why cannula size is important to get a good Liposuction result.
Five levels of anesthesia used in Cosmetic Surgery are:
In many plastic surgery forums I always see the question – ‘Can a tummy tuck can be performed with something other than General Anesthesia’? The good news is YES – you can have a tummy tuck with IV Sedation. Instead of general anesthesia, I use local tumescent anesthesia with IV sedation. This type of anesthesia is highly preferable compared to general anesthesia and I want to explain why. With General anesthesia , a machine is breathing for you and you have a tube down your throat or nose. With IV anesthesia you are breathing on your own and there is no tube in your throat or nose. Recovery from IV sedation is also much easier with IV sedation compared to General anesthesia. Most people experience much less nausea with IV sedation.
Dr. Rodriguez, a Yale trained Plastic Surgeon who has been practicing for over 20 years, gives his thoughts on Smart Lipo. With Smart Lipo, some damaged fat is usually left behind and the skin tightening is temporary.
The Body lift procedure removes excess skin from the stomach, hips, and buttocks. Patients who have experienced a large weight loss (from Ozempic, Wegovy, Semaglutide or Tirzepatide, or from Gastic surgery) are the typical candidates for the procedure. The Body lift is a Tummy tuck, an outer thigh lift, and a buttock lift performed in the same operative session.
Getting the best results for a Body lift is a function of the surgeon’s surgical markings, and taking out the right amounts of fat and skin. Surgical markings will seal the fate of how the wound is closed. Taking out too much fat and skin can be a big problem for the closure. If the top layer closer is too tight, the wound will separate post operatively. I believe that the Lockwood technique provides the best method for excising precisely the right amount of fat and skin.
Lipo to the love handles means different things to different plastic surgeons. Many surgeons consider liposuction to the love handles as just liposuction to the front flanks. They do not take any fat from the backside. Lipo to the full flanks is lipo to the love handles and liposuction to the back flanks. The back flanks is the area immediately above the buttocks.
The size of the cannula used in tumescent Liposuction can make a difference in the surgical result. You are more likely to get a smooth result if your surgeon uses a thin cannula . Read about the types of cannulas from Dr. Ricardo Rodriguez in Baltimore, Maryland.
The average amount of operating room 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 long, it is normal to ask yourself these questions: ‘How can risks be reduced with a Body lift?”, “Can the choice of anesthesia reduce the risks?”
In my previous blog post about postoperative Tummy tuck swelling I talked about how the blood supply is disrupted to different degrees using the two different types of Tummy tuck techniques (standard vs. Lockwood). In summary, the more skin that is elevated and separated from the muscle layer, the more blood supply disruption you have. On this post we will address swelling of the tissues after Tummy tuck and why compression garments following surgery are important to reduce swelling. The body is made mostly of water, and there is a constant fluid leakage from the tissues balanced by reuptake of fluid into the lymphatic drainage system. When the lymphatic system is impaired, we get fluid accumulations. The fluid can accumulate between the tissues as interstitial fluid (like a soaked sponge), or outside of the tissues as a seroma (like a sac of fluid). It can also accumulate at some distance from the operative site, usually the upper thighs or legs. The drawing illustrates the various types of fluid accumulation following surgery. As you move from left to right on the illustration you have increasing swelling to result in these conditions:
Dr. Rodriguez explains how Abdominoplasty surgical techniques influence blood supply disruption and post-operative swelling, so let’s take a look at how that plays into reducing swelling and eliminating fluid collections.
I get many patients who come into my Baltimore office requesting a Tummy tuck. The Tummy tuck will give a much flatter tummy, and if they get liposuction around the love handle area, a drastic reshaping of the entire midsection. But the biggest drawback is the scar. It goes most of the time from hip bone to hip bone. Invariably, I get the question, can we do a Mini Tummy tuck? The patient is hoping to get most of what she needs with a smaller scar and a less involved surgery. What is the difference between the Tummy tuck and the Mini Tummy tuck?
