Your Questions
Your Questions
Q: Dr. Eppley, I am interested in some form of a buttock lift. I I would like to have the extra skin/wrinkles removed from my butt. I have hoped to find a procedure that did not include implants. Do you feel I am I a candidate for this surgery procedure?
A: What you are demonstrating is a severe buttock sag with a lot of folds/rolls of skin around the bottom of the buttocks. This often occurs in very thin women as they age and may also happen after a significant amount of weight loss. While it it true that buttock augmentation would help pick up some of this loose skin, it would take a massively large augmentation to do so. The better approach is to do a lower buttock lift or tuck which removes all the skin folds on the bottom half of the buttock. This places the scar along what should be the infragluteal fold or lower buttock crease. This will not increase the volume of the buttocks, which will still be very flat but it will get rid of a lot of that saggy skin which makes one’s buttocks look a lot older than they really are.
Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana
Q: Dr. Eppley, I have a sagging buttocks problem that started when I had liposuction done many years ago. No matter how much I diet and exercise the lower buttocks will not tighten up. I have seen some pictutes of your buttock lift results and they show MAJOR improvement and the scarring seems minimal. Based on my pictures, would you anticipate my having similar results? Do you have any concerns with my age (47) or the fact I have had previous lipo done? What is the recovery like? As you can see, I have volume, I work out like crazy. I want a symmetrical lifted butt. Please tell me there is hope.
A: This is precisely the improvement I would expect. When you cut out the buttock overhang and tuck it, that is always the result one will get. It is an operation that just works. As long as one keeps the side part of the scar no further than the lateral edge of the lower gluteal crease, the scar is not visible. The fact that you have had liposuction previously is probably what may have contributed to the problem and, if anything, is more helpful than harmful as it enables the tuck to be done more effectively due to the loose skin that it has created. I have seen women have this procedure from age 30 to 72, but I don’t think age as anything to do with the success of the procedure. It is all about the anatomy of the problem. If there is overhang, it can be removed and tucked at any age. The recovery from a lower buttock lift is fairly easy. It is not a painful procedure afterwards, just a feeling of tightness in the lower buttocks. (which, of course, one should have if the procedure is done adequately) The only destruction in the first month after surgery is that one has to be careful about bending over which pulls on the incision line…but one is well aware of that because of its tightness. The biggest restriction of that is that one will not be doing any significant exercise that involves the legs.
Otherwise, this is a one hour procedure done under general anesthesia
Dr. Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana