Total Body Lift

Plastic surgeon Dr. Joseph Fodero provides several post-weight loss body contouring procedures, including total body lift, lower body lift, abdominoplasty, and tummy tuck. In this clip, Dr. Fodero talks about the ideal patient for a total body lift and gives details about the procedure that can completely transform a person's body.

DR. JOSEPH FODERO: Plastic surgery after massive weight loss is a very big part of my practice, and is really a growing part, or subspecialty, in plastic surgery. Obesity is rampant in our country, and more and more people are losing weight and seeing the changes of weight loss. So people have dramatic improvement in their health after losing weight. Unfortunately, they’re often left with bodies that they’re unhappy with, and when you talk to people that have lost weight, many people don’t feel thin until that excess skin has been removed. The majority of massive weight loss patients will seek a body lift as their first procedure, and the reason is that it is the operation the most dramatic improvement in their body habitus, with improvement of their stomach, thighs, and buttock, at one operative setting. Many people will have additional areas of concern, such as their arms, their breasts, or their legs, and these can be corrected with specific plastic surgery procedures. The ideal patient for body contouring after massive weight loss is someone that has done really the hard work. They have dramatically changed their life, and they have lost the weight, and they’ve kept the weight off. So whether they’ve lost weight with a bariatric procedure, such as gastric bypass or gastric banding, or they’ve done it with some other modality, if it’s Weight Watchers or whatever technique that they’ve used, when someone comes to me after massive weight loss, they’ve already done the hard work. And my goal is to take them to a place where they can’t get on their own. So I call plastic surgery after massive weight loss the next step, because it’s something that you can’t do on your own. And it’s really for anyone that’s dissatisfied with how their body is left. Someone that’s lost 50, 100, 150 pounds will come into my office and everybody has a different problem and something else they want corrected. Some people may not like their arms or their breasts, many people are concerned about their abdomens, their backs, their buttocks, some people will be concerned about their thighs. So the goal of plastic surgery after massive weight loss is to figure out what it is that bothers the patient. It is to design an operation, or set of operations, that will correct that problem, to perform it meticulously and safely, and to give them the body that they want. The majority of patients will seek what’s called a lower body lift, which is an operation that typically takes anywhere from four to six hours to perform. It’s performed in a hospital, and usually requires a day or two of inpatient stay, and most people will spend at least two to four weeks out of school or work. So it’s a big operation with a real recovery, but it’s an operation that will completely transform their body. And we call it a body lift because what it is, in essence, is it’s a combination of three operations. It’s the ultimate abdominoplasty, or tummy tuck; it is a very good thigh lift; and it is a conservative buttock lift. So in one operation, someone that has lost a lot of weight will have a complete torso rejuvenation.