Tummy Tuck Surgery – Variations in tummy tuck incisions

Adrian Richards, Leading Plastic Surgeon at Aurora Clinics explains the various incisions that can be used be with Tummy Tuck surgery. For more information please contact Aurora Clinics on 01844 214362 and speak to one of our patient advisors.  Aurora Clinics discusses the variations on tummy tuck incisions

Tummy Tuck Surgery Variations in Incisions

Hello. My name’s Adrian Richards, and I’m a plastic and cosmetic surgeon. Today I’m going to be talking a little a bit about the different types of incisions you can have with tummy tuck surgery.

Tummy tuck surgery is also known abdominoplasty, mini-abdominoplasty, and another word that is sometimes used is apronectomy. All words basically used to describe tummy tuck surgery. I’ve talked about these on other videos.

Today, I’m specifically talking about where the incisions are. Most people want the incisions low. If you’ve got a Caesarean scar, Caesarean scars can vary in height quite a lot. They can be quite low or they can be slightly high depending on your surgeon. If you’ve had multiple Caesareans, sometimes you’ll have two or three scars. The normal practice now with Caesareans is for the surgeon to remove the old scar. Some surgeons will do another cut, which would leave you with different incisions.

The first thing to do is to assess where your Caesarean scar is. The normal practice with a tummy tuck surgery is, rather than give you another scar on top of your Caesarean, to remove your Caesarean scar and just give you one scar. In the ’80s, there was a real fashion for quite a high-waisted scar which corresponded to the underwear worn in those times a bit more. That was more of a sort of U-shaped scar, flat but then going quite high up in the waist.

There was also a trend to do what was called a W-shaped scar, that’s got the high lateral area but with a slight V in the middle. This really has fallen out of fashion with most surgeons because with underwear and clothing people tend to wear now with low cut jeans and things, that lateral part of the scar can sometimes be visible. We’re tending very much more to have much lower scars. The scar, nowadays, would tend to be below the Caesarean, and you really need to discuss this with your surgeon where the scar is going to be. Then it would extend out sideways in a gentle curve but quite low below the bony prominences of your hips. If you feel your hip, the scar should be below that.

How far does the scar need to go? Well, it needs to go as far as the tissue is. If you’ve just been carrying your children in the front, and you’ve just got the excess tissue in the front, the scar doesn’t need to go as far out as if you’ve perhaps lost weight and in your pregnancy you had more weight on the side. The scar needs to be adjusted to you.

In very severe cases, we can do what’s called an extended abdominoplasty where I take the scar around to the side to remove that tissue there. The length of scar is really dependent upon yourself. We tend to favour a low scar. What I do, quite often, is ask the patient to bring in either a bikini or underwear she would like to wear and we can actually design the scar to lie within that sort of clothing.

I’m going to talk a little bit more in further videos about how the scar will mature with time and what you can expect from your scar. I hope what I’ve just talked about is informative and interesting. If you’d like any more information or to talk to us about the type of scarring for abdominoplasties, please contact us either via the website, Aurora-Clinics.co.uk or please give us a ring on our office number which is 01844 214362. Thanks very much for watching this video. We hope to see you soon.