Liposuction Vs. Tummy Tuck - What's the Difference? Tri Valley Plastic Surgery

In our Bay Area practice we encourage patients to think of their abdomen as two parts. The first is abdominal volume, the second is the skin envelope around the abdomen. Each may have a need for cosmetic improvement and the approach for managing a particular patient must be carefully tailored for that patient. Lipo is great for targeted permanent fat removal but not as good for skin envelope reshaping. Even with new gadgets like "laser lipo" most of the time if there is significant excess skin it needs to be removed by excision. Lipo is also not always appropriate in situations where there is a great deal of fat and in these situations excision of the fat or additional weight loss prior to surgical treatment gets patients better results. In many cases patients after pregnancy may need an abdominoplasty. The way to think about the process is to consider the following parts of your abdominal contour: 1. Intra-abdominal contents (organs, bone) - this part you can't change 2. Muscle separation - Separated muscle can cause significant weakness resulting in abdominal bulge of the intra-abdominal contents. This requires a tummy tuck to correct. 3. Subcutaneous fat - this is typically what liposuction targets but is also resected at the time of tummy tuck 4. Skin - Again, an abdominoplasty is required for this. A tummy tuck traditionally deals with both the skin and the abdominal contour by removing tissue and repositioning the muscles. Some argue a greater ability to "shape" the underlying fat with lipo but few would argue the ability to remove redundant skin with an abdominoplasty and reposition the abdominal muscles.