Your Suitability for Body Lift Surgery

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Body lift surgery should really only be considered once you have given your skin a reasonable amount of time (a couple of years is recommended by a lot of surgeons) to tighten up on its own. A number of different ways that this can be encouraged are mentioned in previous sections. Your surgeon will want to see that you have tried other methods before you opt for body lift surgery, so it would be worth making a note of all the methods you had tried previously.

If you are a woman considering having children you should not have body lift surgery until after you have given birth. This is because pregnancy would stretch the scarring left by the body lift surgery and reduce the results by re-stretching the skin across your abdomen. In fact, drooping skin left from large pregnancies is one of the reasons that patients undergo body lift surgery in the first place!   

Weight loss and body lift surgery suitability

If you are currently obese or have a high BMI you will need to lose weight before you will be considered for body lift surgery. This is due to the high risk caused to obese patients under general anaesthetic. Also, body lift surgery will remove excess skin but only a small proportion of fat so it is not suitable for use as a weight loss tool. You should consider other cosmetic procedures (such as liposuction or gastric bypass) if you want to use surgery to lose weight. If you BMI is not excessively high, you might wish to consider losing weight by changing your lifestyle (which is an undeniably cheaper method than surgery!) Be prepared for your surgeon to ask you to lose weight before your body lift surgery can be carried out.

Smoking and fitness requirements for body lift surgery

If you smoke then you should seriously consider quitting before your body lift surgery. This is because smoker’s bodies have a reduced ability for wound healing so they have an increased risk of developing infections and skin loss. Some surgeons will refuse to operate at all on heavy smokers so you need to address this issue early on in the process of researching body lift surgery and deciding where to have it done. Having a general anaesthetic carries a number of risks but you vastly reduce these risks by not smoking and living a healthy lifestyle to increase your health and fitness levels prior to surgery.

By carrying out regular exercise to reduce your BMI and increase your cardiovascular health you will increase your suitability for body lift surgery. The fitter you are when you have body lift surgery, the quicker your recovery process will be.

Past medical conditions and chronic medical conditions

Patients who have previously had an inflamed blood vessel (phlebitis) in the lower leg will probably not be a good candidate for body lift surgery. If you have had previous surgery where you experienced slow or problematic healing your surgeon may suggest that body lift surgery is not appropriate for you. Similarly, if you suffer from keloid (where your body forms raised, red scars), then your surgeon will probably advice you that (whilst you are potentially still suitable for body lift surgery) your scarring may be more unsightly than the excess skin that you currently have, so you might want to reconsider other options.

Your surgeon may also consider you unsuitable for body lift surgery if you are diabetic, have sever arthritis or suffer from asthma. Other chronic conditions may cause you to be an unsuitable candidate for body lift surgery and you may also be considered unsuitable if you have a current mental health condition. It would be a good idea to speak to your GP if you have any doubts.

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