Hanging skin from arms.
Jeannine Morrissette: Okay, for those of you who just joined us, you are listening to Nip Talk Radio with Dr. Michael Salzhauer, board certified plastic surgeon. Please give us a call at 1-877-850-8585. Ask your questions or just listen to others. We do have another email. I got a lot of emails this week, Dr. Salzhauer.
Dr. Michael Salzhauer: Sure.
Jeannine Morrissette: This one was Sandy from Weston. She had lost 50 pounds. She's 45 years old, but she didn't want the big scar on her arm. She was thinking about an arm lift. Is there any alternative for that?
Dr. Michael Salzhauer: Well, when you lose 50 or more pounds, you tend to have a lot of extra skin that hangs. Whatever I say here also goes for massive weight loss patients that had gastric bypass and that sort of thing. There really is no way to get rid of that skin without leaving a scar. We do try to minimize the scars by hiding them in natural body creases. For example, for the abdomen, for the extra skin that hangs off of the belly, we have the patient come in with their smallest bikini. I draw that on them. Then I try to keep the incisions in the bikini line, so that the only time anyone's going to ever see those scars is when they're completely unclothed. As far as the arms go, depending on how much skin there is, the incision can stay relatively high up in the axilla in the underarm area. Or, if there's a lot of skin hanging lower down in the arm, it's going to have to go reach down almost to the elbow. Those scars are fairly noticeable, the ones that go down to the elbow. I do try to hide it so that it is not visible in a normal posture with your arms at your side. But if you lift up your arms and you lift up your elbow, obviously, someone's going to see it if you're wearing short sleeves. Now, in certain cases, a lot of women come in that just have a little bit of skin on the upper part of the arm and we can use a short scar, brachioplasty, that's the technical name for the operation that gets rid of the skin out of the arms.
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 11:01 am and is filed under Branchioplasty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tara
Says:October 12th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I personally have had an arm lift with Dr. Salzhauer. I will be honest it was an extrememly difficult surgery for me to recover from but it was also the most worth while of all the procedures that I have had. I am 21 years old and I had lost around 100 pounds leaving me with a large amount of extra skin under my arms. Before my surgery I had never worn a sleeveless shirt or a bathing suit without a t-shirt on top. 2 weeks after my surgery I wore one out of the house for the first time to my check up at the office it was one of the best days I can remember. It has been 2 years since I had it done and at first the scars are unsightly but now they are barely even visible. Besides it is not very often that you put your underarm in someone’s face.As we speak I am wearing a dress another thing I never was able to do before surgery. As I said it was a difficult surgery, but one that I would do again I feel more like a lady and not so self concious which is worth so much.