Where do I start?

I meet with men and women every day asking the same question. Where do I start? As you lose weight, your body undergoes a metamorphasis. Arms, legs, breasts, bellies and butts all change and often not for the better. With so many areas of concern, how does one formulate a plan to fix things? My first question is usually, “What bothers you the most?”. I then ask patients to prioritize things, ranking the areas in order of concern.  For me, it makes the most sense to address the areas of greatest concern and work from there. When numerous areas need to be addressed, then we must come up with a plan to address them is a safe, logical, and efficient fashion.

The vast majority of individuals usually point to their mid-section as their area of greatest concern. This is most often approached with a lower body lift procedure or an abdominoplasty. From there, I generally recommend working up or working down. By this, I mean addressing upper body concerns as a single unit to include the breasts, arms, and back. We then work down addressing the legs. Certainly, there is nothing written in stone that things need to approached in this order. Procedures can be combined in a responsible fashion depending upon your own situation. My general approach is to break up total body rejuvenation into reasonable parts. Each part should be safe and well tolerated by the individual concerned. I am not an advocate of total body lifting as a single procedure. One can’t have too much surgery all at once without comprimizing safety and the ultimate result. Most individuals can address all there concerns in 2-3 surgical episodes. These can be completed in less than a year or spread out over many years. There is no one correct approach for everyone.

We will spend time over the next few months talking about specific procedures and about changing trends in the approach to plastic surgery after weight loss. I hope you find these thoughts interesting and helpful. Stay tuned…

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~ by drkrieger on February 11, 2010.