Vaser Liposuction Arm Lift, is that for me?
If you ask most women over 40 what their least favorite body part is, you might think it is their butt, BUT that would be wrong. For the majority of women it’s their arms. Even women who work out and have good muscle mass can have a certain amount of wiggle and jiggle. As women gain weight, this tends to get worse, and if they lose large amounts of weight the problem gets even worse. Perhaps you are thinking liposuction will help. Well maybe. but it can escalate to the “bat wing” status. If you’re looking at exercise books and videos there are exercises designed to firm up your arms. The problem is you can’t firm up skin with muscular exercises. You can get strong. You can grow the muscles a little, but the skin will not change. So what are the options?
For a mild excess of skin in the arm rather than liposuction, Thermage is an excellent skin treatment. Using radiofrequency energy waves the collagen is heated and over the next several months causes the skin to shrink. In medium cases the best option is liposuction. Whenever liposuction is done not only does it remove fat but also shrinks the skin. The best type of liposuction nowadays is Vaser liposuction. With Vaser liposuction the fat is melted by ultrasonic sound. This removes more fat than traditional liposuction. It also causes more skin shrinkage. With only one or two small incisions the whole arm can be improved. Afterwords a tight garment is worn for three to four weeks.
The most effective solution other than liposuction for large arm excess, especially in women who have lost lots of weight is the plastic surgery solution, is an arm lift. An arm lift is a plastic surgery procedure that removes the hanging skin. The best way to do an arm lift is to also combine it with Vaser laser liposuction and then remove the skin, leaving a scar on the back of the arm, yet hidden in most arm positions. If necessary this can be taken down through the armpits along the side of the breasts. The trade-off of an arm lift is of course the scar, but for most people an arm lift scar is much better than the floppy hanging skin which liposuction alone will not take care of. With an arm lift, there are several different scar placements but the best seems to be the one with a scar along the bottom of the arm when arms are raised up in the holdup position. As more people are losing weight for the health and with the popularity of gastric bypasses the demand for arm lifts is increasing. When liposuction is not an option the arm lift procedure is a safe and reliable. With the introduction of new quill barbed sutures that we use here at Advanced Concepts in Plastic Surgery of Sacramento, the appearance of the scars has been much improved.
