Like a Tummy Tuck, Without Surgery [Episode 1]
A 49-year-old mom from Austin needs a tummy tuck but doesn’t want scars and isn’t willing to give up tennis for more than a few days to recover. While many decide the tummy tuck recovery and scar are worth it, it’s not always necessary to have surgery to get great results.
Dr. Rob takes us through his innovative Smart Tummy Tuck procedure, a layered approach combining liposuction with Evolve, BodyTite, Fractora, Morpheus8 to flatten and smooth out the abdomen in the office with little to no recovery time.
Read more about Smart Tummy Tuck and see Dr. Rob’s Smart Tummy Tuck photos
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the holistic and scientific podcast with board certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Robert Whitfield, Austin’s natural choice for plastic surgery and the expert in smart laser and energy treatments.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
So today we’re gonna talk about tummy tuck, smart, tummy, tuck, and evolve. So those are three things that have never been put together, probably on a podcast ever in the history of the world. I know this because I came up with a smart tummy tuck in my office and evolve as a brand new device produced by in mode tummy. Tuck’s been around for decades, essentially. One of the main things taught to plastic surgeons. So let’s unpack what a 49 year old woman with a couple kids comes into my office. What can I offer her what’s best for her? What fits her in this particular instance, this person has had two kids. She’s interested in abdominal rejuvenation, specifically with the lower abdomen. She doesn’t have much in the way of excess scan and, and doesn’t have really significant stretch marks. She wants to know based on her friend’s referral to her of me about options available to her.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
So in particular, she makes a very big deal about scarring. She’s plays tennis all the time here in Austin, doesn’t want to have any more visible scar and then absolutely necessary. And so I speak to her about first evolve. So evolves completely noninvasive. You can treat in rows, the upper and lower abdomen with these applicators trim will reduce fat and cellulite takes about 15 minutes. You follow that up with a tight applicator and a layer of ultrasound gel, and that will help tighten the skin that takes about 45 minutes. And then the tone element basically will cause the abdominal muscles to contract. And so think of like doing a crunch except for it’ll be the most intense crunch you could ever do because the muscle will fully contract when the actual device fires. So that’s a noninvasive way to give abdominal rejuvenation. The next way would be to do a smart tummy tuck.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
And so a smart tummy tuck is a layered approach. Think about liposuction, traditionally done to decrease or Debu an area of stubborn fat that could be love, handle areas, lateral thighs tomies. Those are the traditional places where we accumulate fat that we don’t like. And we wanna get rid of what makes a good lipo suction result versus a bad. And what’s a great one. So basically it’s your age <laugh> so when you’re 20 and you have lip dissection, your elasticity is high and your collagen level is high in your skin and everything great. When it’s done provided it’s done properly. So always get a credentialed board, certified plastic surgeon, by the way, to do your lip perception. If you want to have the best possible results, you gotta have somebody who knows what they’re doing now, as you age, your skin will become more lax.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And by the time you’re in their thirties and forties, if you’ve not had children, that result will start to wax and wane a little bit. It’ll loosen up. We see this most frequently in chins, honestly, chin lip suction done in the twenties and thirties looks a little bit ragged when you get in your fourth and fifth decade of life. And so how does that get us to a smart tummy tuck? If somebody has accumulate at the lower abdomen and upper abdomen, you can always Debu that, reduce the fat with liposuction. There’s different ways to do liposuction. There’s power assisted there’s old ultrasound assisted there’s laser liposuction. I prefer power assisted liposuction. I feel like I have a lot of control with it, and that’s most important to me. So how do I get a better skin tightening result when we’re doing this? If in fact they’re older.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
So if you use equipment to tighten the skin like body tight, like more, if you say like rah, you can get about 30% more skin tightening. So body tighten can be done through small openings inside the inner diameter of the belly button. And you can hide all this pretty easily. So once you fill the area with fluid, before you do lip, you can actually do the body tight. You just use a layer, ultrasound, gel, and body tight is like a pair of electrified forceps. One limb goes beneath the skin, one’s above the skin and you treat these areas, think of like a pie chart, just do it in quadrants. We use a thermographic camera to evaluate the intensity of the treatment, a coupled to the feedback of the machine. And I won’t parse it out too much, but after a limited treatment time, you can actually have tightened the skin in real time.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Then you can go and do the liposuction. You can thin this out. You can de bulk areas without a great deal of concern for loosen up the skin too much at the very, very end. Once everything’s cleansed and closed, all your incisions are closed and I glue everything shut. So there’s really limited chance for any type of bacterial infection. Then we’ll do microneedling. And first I’ll start with like amorphous eight microneedling at different depths, four millimeters, usually down to three to if there’s a lot of stretch marks. I like to use the fr microneedling device, a fixed microneedling device, but it really works on superficial extra issues like stretch marks. And that’s really all told to smart tummy tech takes a couple hours in the office under local, transitioning that to a traditional tummy tech. When you evaluate patients for tummy tech, depending on how much waste rejuvenation they need, do they have, for instance, a lot of love handle fat, lower back fat.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
If the surgeon doesn’t evaluate this by just rotating the patient around, you’re not gonna be able to see what really the end result will be because basically a tummy tuck takes the lower abdomen tissue and moves it forward. Ex excites it and tightens it. It also tightens the musculature on the inside. And so this is usually where the big recovery issues come into play with tummy tuck. Whereas evolve has no recovery. The smart tummy tuck is done under local in the office. You walk in, walk out and your recovery’s basically edema, or just swelling after lip suction, cuz radio frequency, skin tightening. Doesn’t give you a or need for recovery period. Now a tummy tech will have a recovery period because when you realign the erectus, a domino muscles to take care of the diastasis and tighten that people feel that it changes their core.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And when you engage your core, you’ll feel it. So basically one way to mitigate this is to use liposomal pivoting, which is called XBO and block all that. In addition to blocking the external bleak, basically you can get better control of this, but if in fact you haven’t done liposuction of the lower back love handle flank area. However you wanna parse that out. You will Ize a female waste. So you want to take somebody who’s a little para shaped and you wanna carve out. You want to de bulk the area by usually starting them in the prone position, approaching it from the, just below the sacral area between the butt cheeks. Really it’ll be hidden by a thong, but you will take that fat out. You’ll reduce it. And then when you flip ’em back over now, when you excise that tissue remove all the fatty tissue and basical basically close you’ve now sculpted the waste more.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Now tummy tucks, leave you a relatively lengthy scar from hip to hip bone. There’s really no way about that. Very few people are candidates for minis. Most people need a full tummy tuck. And so the downtime, couple weeks, six weeks of recovery walking with a stoop for a while plus or minus of drain. I don’t really, I don’t drain tummy tucks. I do drain less tummy tucks. So there’s still a lot to deal with for that client, the effects of general anesthesia. And so in my 49 year old had two kids plays tennis. She chose a smart tummy tuck. The reason she chose a smart tummy tuck is she was adamant about a result and wanted to return to playing tennis in a couple days. So I don’t limit the activity of the patient who has either evolve or a smart tummy tuck because it’s not necessary.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
So with a traditional tummy tuck, you have to limit their activity. They can’t just go out and do everything. So as we unpacked, did that do enough for this patient? Well, she lost about two inches off of her waistline. Yes. Her skin’s tighter check the texture of the skin’s better check, no downtime, no recovery period. So for her it’s great. And that’s why her friend referred her to me because I, I have more options for noninvasive and minimally invasive approaches rather than just everybody who shows up, gets a tummy tuck to learn more about a smart tummy tuck. Please go to our show notes or visit my website at Dr. Robert whitfield.com.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Take a screenshot of this podcast episode with your phone and show it at your consultation or appointment or mention the promo code podcast to receive $25 off any service or product of $50 or more. Dr. Robert Whitfield is a board certified plastic surgeon located in Austin, Texas near 360 and Walsh Charlton in west lake to learn more, go to Dr. Robert whitfield.com or follow Dr. Rob on Instagram at Dr. Robert Whitfield links to learn more about Dr. Rob’s smart procedures. And anything else mentioned on today’s show are available in the show notes. The holistic and scientific podcast is a production of the axis. T H E A X I S.io.