Q: 2 year post op Tummy tuck, I have dog ears & lower area is hard. Any suggestions? (photos)
Hello everyone, Please advise on the following: Had a tummy tuck July 2013 and ended up with this dog ears on each side and a really super hard area in lower belly that when I lay down and contract to do abs it seems to be indented. That area has no fat, in fact the skin is paper thin and I can even feel what I think are the stiches or what my surgeon used to close up my diastasis. Can this be fix and possibly lower the insicion a little at least on the sides… Thank you for any advise! CG
A: Thin skin normal from stretching around belly button area
The most likely reason for the thin skin is that this area was very stretched during pregnancy around the belly button which has no fat to begin with. The result is good and you are healing very well. The dog ears can only be treated with excision. I would caution against fat grafting because this is very expensive, leads to potential irregularity and the result can be very unreliable. If it bothers you a lot I would recommend you consider advancing the flap further down as much as possible. You could excise the skin but this would leave a vertical scar which with your healing may not be too bad, but vertical scars typically heal much worse than the transverse scars. If you take out the stitch you may have a separation of the diastase repair which could also cause irregularity of contour. But you could find out what type of suture was used. Some, like Prolene are hard and more easily palpable, whereas others are softer and could be less bothersome, such as Ethibond. So if you do not have a soft suture, you could replace it with a soft, permanent suture. The dense area are likely fat which reestablished the blood supply slowly because they are at the end of the flap. These can be excised if you re-advance the flap, but I would recommend deep massage which would break down the scar and allow the areas to remodel, flatten and desensitize. Lot’s of options!! Best to go back to your doctor to see if your doctor has ideas for a revision that can be done to resolve the problems.
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