You may never have thought you’d be interested in plastic surgery. Then, you had children. Perhaps you gained a significant amount of baby weight, which seemed to linger for years. Or you may be a person who’s struggled with weight and yo-yo dieting most of your adult life.
And then, liberation: you lose the weight, through permanent lifestyle changes or weight-loss surgery. But there’s one problem: the excess skin hasn’t gotten the message. Although you’ve changed your lifestyle and have maintained your new, healthy weight, deposits of fat and extra skin are still hanging around. A breast reduction may help to restore your proportion, a breast lift may solve your sagging problem and/or breast implants may add fullness to your deflated breasts. But what about the saggy arms, layer of flab over your toned belly and buttocks that have lost the battle with gravity?
Combination Surgeries: The Wave of the Future?
It’s not uncommon for women to have other procedures performed along with breast augmentation or reduction. Tummy tucks, body lifts (to remove excess skin from the thighs and buttocks), medial thigh lifts (removing excess skin from the inside of the thigh), brachioplasty (removing excess skin from arms) and facelifts are the most common.
Combination surgeries — where several procedures are folded into one lengthier surgery — are becoming more popular. The trend is all about health and safety. If you are strong enough, it’s usually safer to have just one larger surgery, versus two or three smaller surgeries. It’s less stress to the body to only undergo anesthesia once, and to only have to recover once. Though health should always be your No. 1 priority, it’s worth mentioning that it’s also usually less expensive to have one large surgery versus several smaller ones. Surgeons will usually charge less for subsequent procedures done at the same time, and your fees from the anesthesiologist will be less. If you’re considering multiple procedures, talk to your surgeon about whether or not you’re a good candidate for a combination surgery.