While there are minimally invasive options for skin tightening that can yield fantastic results for the right people and in the right areas, there is nothing nonsurgical that can take the place of the tummy tuck.
Who: Dr. Houssock and Danielle lay out who is a candidate for a full, mini, or reverse tummy tuck.
When: Find out how to plan your surgery and identify the best timing for your life
How: the who, what, and why of tummy tuck options we offer and explain who might be the best fit for each; what recovery looks like for each procedure, and what’s included in Dr. Houssock’s all-inclusive tummy tuck.
Transcript
Dr. Houssock (00:04):
You are listening to another episode of Perfectly Imperfect. Hello, Danielle.
Danielle (00:09):
Hello.
Dr. Houssock (00:10):
Happy Monday.
Danielle (00:11):
Happy Monday. My voice is back.
Dr. Houssock (00:15):
Your voice is back. We were trying to record last week, but Danielle legitimately lost her voice and it wasn’t just an excuse. She literally couldn’t speak, so we had to postpone. So here we are.
Danielle (00:26):
Yeah. I’m back.
Dr. Houssock (00:28):
She wasn’t able to postpone any further.
Danielle (00:32):
No.
Dr. Houssock (00:32):
We’ve been doing these podcasts now for a few months, and as much as we were very excited to have a new way to speak to our patients, it’s a lot for every one of us to get used to being on camera and also just getting the whole heebie-jeebies out. And I think because I’m always doing this stuff on social media and not really caring too much, it didn’t feel like that much a transition to me, but I’ve had to be respectful of the fact that the rest of my staff doesn’t do that all the time, and they’ve been doing a really great job. So this is not Danielle’s first time on the podcast. Just to remind everybody, Danielle is the director of JEV Plastic Surgery. So she is the director of my practice. She’s been here, she’s a VIP. She’s been here a long time and she knows a lot. And I mean, sometimes patients even confuse us, don’t they?
Danielle (01:21):
Yes, they do.
Dr. Houssock (01:23):
And she really is, she’s such an extension of me and she runs this thing. So we do our consultations together and we do a lot of everything. So we do head to toe plastic surgery, but one of the big groups of patients that we take care of are women who are interested in taking care of their abdominal region. So we thought that we would do a separate podcast to talk about that. And let’s just say it is complicated and it isn’t a cookie cutter straightforward thing. And Danielle and I thought that we would just kind of break down if you have concerns in your abdomen or your core region, what are your options and what might be the right choice for you specifically?
Danielle (02:09):
Yeah, it does get complicated, and I think patients get confused by some of the terminology with tummy tucks between mini, full, what that means, and so I do get a lot of questions where people will call and say, I want to schedule a consult for a mini tummy tuck. And they come in and Dr. Houssock might recommend a full, and then they get confused by why. So how do you decide who is a candidate for a full, a mini or a reverse, and what qualifications would that patient have to be considered for that?
Dr. Houssock (02:40):
Yeah, so generally speaking, patient will come in. Danielle and I will know that she’s concerned about the abdomen. And we usually just start by just chatting with the patient before I like to do that. I do not seeing the physical, it’s kind of wild maybe, but before I even allow the patient to disrobe in front of us, I sit down with them first and I like them to describe what they see because I don’t want to go into this, and the first thing we do, I see their naked body, and of course I’m going to have a thought on it’s what I do and I’m going to have ways that I want to make it better. But what if it’s not what the patient’s seeing at all? Right? What if the skin never bothered them at all? And I go in and I’m like, well, you need to remove the skin here.
(03:27):
And they’re like, well, wait, I didn’t even, I’m here because this is bulgy. So the first thing I always do is I ask the patient why they’re here and what it is that they’re bothered by and what they were hoping to achieve. And I always also say sometimes because patients these days, especially today in today’s world, they’ll come in with words and they’ll usually come in with the wrong ones. Well, I would like a liposuction with a 360 and I would like a diet. And I’m like, all right, instead of you telling me what procedure you need, tell me what bothers you. Right? I mean, we see that a lot more than ever.
Danielle (04:00):
Yeah, a lot.
Dr. Houssock (04:01):
Yeah.
Danielle (04:02):
Just social media and they just are more educated with things that are out there.
Dr. Houssock (04:07):
Right. They’re, quote, more educated, meaning that they might think or typecast themselves into a corner. And sometimes we do need to educate that that’s maybe not the right thing and why. So I get information that way. So before the patient even disrobes, I have a feeling for what they’re concerned about. And then I have to see if what they’re concerned about matches the reality. So at that point, I actually always help them over. I don’t know if that’s, what do you think of that? Do you ever notice it? I always put my hand out. So I think about that because I just think I want it to feel very feminine and proper. So I always take the hand of my patient and I walk them over to the mirror together with me, and then I sit down because I want them to be above me to make them feel like they’re in charge.
(04:51):
So I sit, they stand, we both look in the mirror together at that point we get to see what they have. And so breaking it down in a very basic way, someone who has excess skin on their tummy is the right person for a tummy tuck. Excess fat alone is meant for liposuction. Excess skin and fat would be a combination of the two. And then it depends on where that excess skin is as to how we will treat it and what tummy tuck is appropriate. And the type of tummy tuck has no bearing on how heavy they are. People think I have a significant amount, it must be a full tummy tuck, I only have a little skin, it must be a mini, but that’s technically incorrect. So a mini tummy tuck only treats the very bottom of the tummy. So anything from the belly button down, if you have excess skin in that region, a mini abdominoplasty will treat that of the abdomen.
(05:58):
And all mini means is we’re not going to cut around the belly button and we’re not going to move the belly button, and we’re not going to address any of the excess skin above the belly button. So that’s what makes something mini. Nothing to do with somebody’s weight, nothing to do with somebody’s excess. It’s just where is it. So that’s our mini, and Danielle will tell you, I rarely do them.
Danielle (06:18):
And no muscle repair with the mini.
Dr. Houssock (06:20):
Yes and no muscle repair, rarely a muscle repair because you can only get to a portion of it. And if you think of the abdomen as one big layer, if you only treat the tightness on the bottom, then you’re going to bulge out on the top. So I don’t believe in doing a mini with a diastasis repair. And there are ways, there are people out there who do all kinds of things.
(06:42):
They do, quote, floating the belly button. For all my reasons that I don’t have time for today, I don’t think any of them are the right procedure. So if someone needs a diastasis repair, then they are most of the time going to be getting a full tummy tuck from me. So a full abdominoplasty would not only be able to treat the diastasis repair, the diastasis itself, it would also treat excess skin and tissue above and below the belly button. So if you’ve got extra skin on top, on bottom, you’re going to get a full tummy tuck. And in general, that’s the most common thing we do because most women have that. So, or men, if they have extra skin, whether it was from massive weight gain, pregnancy, they’re going to stretch the belly as a whole. So it’s very unusual for someone to just have lower abdominal skin.
(07:30):
It’s not impossible, but it’s not that common. Now, just as an aside and probably a separate podcast, I happen to offer a reverse tummy tuck in our practice, and it is not something seen in most practices, and I legitimately just fell upon it. So I have a very fit patient population who comes here. And there is this subset of women who may or may not have ever had children, very often they haven’t, but some of them have, who are extremely fit. And what they find is that they have this excess laxity of skin only above the belly button. And it is rare. It’s rare enough that you don’t see a lot of surgeons treating these patients. But it’s not extremely rare in my practice because we happen to be known for it. I’ve written a chapter about this procedure, but those women can actually be treated with, technically it would be a reverse mini, and that would mean that instead of the incision going in the lower abdomen where the bikini line is, the incision goes underneath the breast creases and we only pull up and treat the skin that is from the belly button up.
(08:41):
So the reverse came as a kind of sort of accident in a way. I had a patient who came in early in my career and super fit, I think she was a horse rider, she was an equestrian. She’s super, super fit. And she would just take her skin and pull it up and say, I hate this stuff, and just pull up her skin. And I started thinking about the blood supply of the area, and I thought, why can’t we just do that? Why can’t we just pull up? So she doesn’t have any issues in the lower abdomen. We’ll just make an incision underneath the breast crease. We’ll raise the skin to the belly button, pull it up, tack that down to the rib cage, keep it up there, and the rest is truly history, because it became something that we are known for here. What do you think about that particular procedure, Danielle, because that’s new since you and I started together.
Danielle (09:27):
I would say it’s new, but I feel like not really new anymore, but it’s one of my favorite because for the longest time, for all the years I was here before you got here, there was really no option for those patients other than a full tummy tuck, which usually left them with also a vertical incision because they were so fit, you couldn’t remove the belly button opening. And that’s a lot of scarring for someone who’s that fit and just has a little bit of skin above. So it’s been a wonderful, wonderful addition to the practice, and we’ve had patients fly international for that. It’s great. It’s been wonderful.
Dr. Houssock (10:03):
We really love it. They heal really well. I mean, the key to it is with all these procedures,
Danielle (10:09):
We’ve gotta keep ’em still.
Dr. Houssock (10:10):
Yeah, and it’s the plight that Danielle and I deal with, which I recognize there are some practices who probably deal with different plights, but our plight is that our patient population does not want to sit still. But I think I genuinely think despite they fight us all on it pre op, it is very rare for the patient to not go ahead and follow the rules in the end. But every one of them, whenever we say how much time, because it’s six weeks of no heavy lifting, they’re like,
Danielle (10:34):
That’s going to be my next question. Yeah, how long recovery for each one I know.
Dr. Houssock (10:39):
Yeah. So the recovery time in general, there’s recovery time, then there’s activity level time, right? So Danielle normally and I will tell patients that it’s going to take about a week to two weeks of being home and relaxing to recover from any tummy tuck. The mini you might get away with a week, but generally speaking, any of these things where we are removing tissue or removing skin from your tummy, your best bet is to take off one to two weeks from going to work. And that has been interesting to describe to patients now who so many are working from home, but we still say even if you’re working from home that first week, you’re going to feel so tired and have almost like the flu. So you don’t really want to focus on work even a couple of days out. So at minimum, if you’re working from home, maybe you take a week off.
(11:32):
If you’re working out of the house, you’re going to want to be two weeks. And generally we tell you, it takes about that long for you to be able to drive safely too, to get to work because you’re taking pain medications. You might be taking narcotics, you might be taking muscle relaxants like Valium, which neither are safe to be taking and driving, but also just the pain of it all. You have to be able to safely slam on the brakes if something were to happen while you’re driving. So we do typically tell patients two weeks of not driving. But generally speaking, taking two weeks and really focusing on your recovery is quite frankly speed up your recovery because you’re going to be focusing on that one thing and that one thing only. The minute someone including myself, starts too soon, that’s when you start to feel things that you maybe wouldn’t have if you gave yourself more time.
(12:21):
And so we try to really harp on that, but with the understanding that we’ve all had procedures done here and we all know how hard it’s to take off work. So we don’t say it lightly, we don’t, but at the end of the day, we really want you to get the most for your money and also be the safest and have the best recovery and the best results. So my patient today was not getting a tummy tuck, but I loved what she asked me because she said, you know, it’s going to be really hard for me to take those, for her, for the procedure she had, she needed to refrain from heavy lifting for four weeks, and she said, I need to hear why. And I thought, well, that’s fair. Here’s why. The risk of bleeding, if you could bleed into the pocket and we’d have to remove, she was getting her breasts done, you’d have to have that surgery and that surgery costs money, but it’s also risky for you. You could create a fluid collection. That fluid collection could get infected. We don’t just make these rules up because we’re trying to be annoying. There’s legitimate data and reasons why we want you to behave yourself. And I always say, wait for surgery at a time when you know that you can, right?
Danielle (13:26):
Yep.
Dr. Houssock (13:28):
I mean, think about what’s one of the common things you get asked about these days when it comes to alcohol? We have them hold it and Danielle will talk to ’em about that, and patients sometimes have to wait because they’ve got things going on in their life where they want to be able to celebrate. Right?
Danielle (13:41):
Super Bowl, we had a lot of issues around Super Bowl Sunday.
Dr. Houssock (13:45):
It’s so true. We were over here in Baltimore, as you may or may not know, we didn’t get close, but we got close enough and a lot of our patient populations were worried about scheduling around that time because
Danielle (13:58):
They wanted to have a drink. That’s okay, just plan it when you don’t have anything, that’s fine.
Dr. Houssock (14:03):
Yeah. And that goes for everything. If you have small children, if you have a stressful job, whatever it is that you do, whenever we talk about these procedures, you want to make sure that you’re doing it at the right time. Not just how long is the recovery, but also is the recovery going to be something you can do.
Danielle (14:19):
One thing that brought up was because you mentioned drains too early on, do you use drains with the reverse, the mini and the full? And why? Because I do get that question a lot because people do read about drainless tummy tucks and like to talk about why we use drains and why they’re important and how long they’re in.
Dr. Houssock (14:40):
So I think in this world of aesthetics, it’s the one specialty where every surgeon may want to try to make themselves look like they’re doing something a little bit different or special, or you’re trying to stand out in a sea of professionals who are quite frankly probably all doing a great job. And I think that, that is my honest opinion as to how the drainless tummy tuck has come out. There is nothing in any way that is safer than having a drain after a large procedure where large pieces of tissue or large areas have been raised or opened up. So the only reason to not do a drain in a particular situation like that is to look a little different and maybe be slightly more attractive, but definitely not to do a better job with 100% certainty can say that because drains are annoying straight up.
Danielle (15:40):
That’s what I tell people. They’re not really painful, they’re just more annoying.
Dr. Houssock (15:43):
They’re straight up annoying.
Danielle (15:44):
Yeah. They’re just in the way.
Dr. Houssock (15:46):
It certainly sounds attractive if a surgeon says to you, well, I do mine drainless, but I’m going to tell you there is nothing safer than having a drain after these procedures. So why drains when you do any tummy tuck? You are lifting the skin and subcutaneous fat or tissue off of the abdominal wall where your muscles are and you’re creating a huge open space and the body sees any open space and naturally fills it with fluid. It’s what it does. It’s just how it reacts to a space. It doesn’t leave anything open and empty. So when we do this and we close your incision underneath your skin, which you can’t see is a big open pocket, and if we don’t drain that pocket, that fluid will sit and it will swell and it will keep the skin and subcutaneous tissue from sealing down onto the abdomen.
(16:42):
It can distort the result. It can also be phenomenal nutrition for bacteria. So for all those reasons, drains have been used for decades and decades and decades, and that’s why we do it to this day. And no special fancy way of tacking down your skin flap to that is going to change that need. It’s just not, and I do not consider myself old school. I am always learning. I’m always changing. I’m always altering things and I in no way consider drains old school and I will continue to use them for eternity. Now that being said, they do come with a slight risk. They come through a tiny hole in your skin. So there is a risk since it’s a foreign body that you could get it infected, but that risk benefit ratio of what it does and provides for you and that small risk that you could possibly potentially have a complication from, it is so low that it is worth the risk.
(17:39):
In a mini, whether it’s a reverse or a traditional mini, you get one drain from me. If you do a full tummy tuck, you get two. And the most that any drain stays in is three weeks. But that is very unusual. Typically a mini or a reverse mini comes out at a week and a full tummy tuck will have one come out at week one and one come out 10 to 14 days after. And that’s pretty typical. We’ll have patients who will, either way, when you have lipo, you’re more likely to keep it longer if you don’t have lipo with your tummy tuck, it may not stay as long. But generally speaking, that’s how we do it.
Danielle (18:21):
And the liposuction part of it, I know we don’t really charge extra for certain parts of liposuction, so we talk about what’s included with our tummy tuck, that and then also the Exparel that we include and don’t add on as an extra fee.
Dr. Houssock (18:35):
So when I started practicing right away, I knew that I know what gets the best result for when someone comes in for a body contouring. And so I did not want it to ever be an issue of cost to not do the complete procedure and make the patient have to decide based on cost. So I decided right from the get go that I was going to have an all-inclusive procedure when it came to a tummy tuck and it was going to include everything. If you didn’t need it, that’s fine, but it’s one price and it’s one cost, and you’re not having to check stuff when you yourself wouldn’t really know how beneficial each of those parts are. So it’s just a cost, and included in that cost, any type of tummy tuck. If you need a diastasis repair and I can perform it during the procedure, you do not pay extra for that.
(19:27):
Diastasis is when your rectus muscles instead of lining up at the midline, have stretched and been pulled and the fascia in between them have been pulled so that now you have a rounded appearance and also looseness in your core. I will suture those together, put them back at the midline during your tummy tuck if you need it. If you don’t, fine. If you do, you get it and it does add time to your recovery, but if you’re a person who needed it, you didn’t have to pay for it. It’s just included. The other thing we include is contouring, liposuction around the core, so it doesn’t mean the entire body, but I do include liposuction of the flanks, the back sacral area, and even into the upper abdomen and the sides during my tummy tucks, because I don’t see you as a flat one dimensional, two-dimensional object.
(20:14):
You are a three-dimensional object, and if we don’t treat that entire cylinder, we’re missing out on the final perfect contour. So for again me, you’re not paying extra for that liposuction, it’s included. I will never do a tummy tuck without liposuction if you need it unless someone all out refuses it. And I’ve had one or two in my whole career so far, when we talked about tummy tuck, they said, I do not want liposuction. And most of the time it’s because they’re afraid of it and I would’ve respected it. But once I educate on why I think it’s important for them and what they would get from it and kind of quell their fears, I’ve never had someone refuse the lipo with the tummy tuck after the fact. But I have had a couple say, I’m not doing any lipo. I just want my skin removed.
(21:00):
And then when I say, well, listen, you’re going to miss out on the contouring of the sides, that back area right above your buttock instead of when you look to the side now you’re going to be uniform. Also, the big benefit of it is if you do, because life’s going to happen, if you gain weight or lose weight in the future, you’ll gain it or lose it uniformly. I’ve seen patients from the past where surgeons didn’t do that, and they just focus on what you wanted to focus on, and they come back five, 10 years later and they bulgy areas where they weren’t treated because when you do gain weight, you’re going to gain it preferentially to the areas you haven’t had lipo. So again, if you look at the body as a cylinder, if you don’t liposuction the entire cylinder, it’s not going to age gracefully. It’s going to age uniformly. Have you seen that, Danielle, over the years? Have you seen patients come in like that?
Danielle (21:51):
Oh yeah. Or ones that have for some reason just gotten liposuction of upper abdomen because they had a little bulge and then they get a little irregular bump in the lower or in their flanks, and it just doesn’t ever look right when you don’t do it all the way around.
Dr. Houssock (22:08):
It sounds a little crazy, but it’s like sculpturing, almost like you’re like a sculpture.
Danielle (22:13):
Yeah, patients usually love that part of it. And then we also do include your stage one garments, so that’s always included. We don’t charge extra for that. And then the Exparel, the Exparel part of that.
Dr. Houssock (22:23):
Yes, yes, Exparel. So pain after surgery is obviously always a very scary thing for everyone. Probably another great just on its own podcast of your post postoperative experience, and we’ll dive into that more some other time. But we do want to keep you comfortable and everyone kind of expects to be sent home with a narcotic and we do. But I will say that even during my career as a surgeon, I’ve noticed that we’ve gotten smarter about what really works and anesthesia has done a lot of research on this and found that narcotics are really not the best when it comes to giving you postoperative pain control. They’re okay, but they’re not great. And we do still provide a low dose narcotics to our patients. We also encourage Tylenol and ibuprofen right out the gate. Quite frankly, I think they work better for the inflammation that you experience.
(23:12):
But one of the things that we do in all of our women who generally speaking, get a tummy tuck or reverse, we use something called Exparel. And Exparel is a fancy medication that is injected into the tissues, and it is a slow acting, slow breakdown local anesthesia. So while we might numb you in the OR with some temporary numbing while you’re asleep, this one in particular, once it gets injected, will last a full 72 hours for comfort. So we use that specifically in the incisions. We use it in the diastasis repair for the reverse tummy tuck. I suture you to the rib cage up top. We use it there, and it really does create some long acting comfort. I’m not going to say that it takes away all your pain, but it certainly gives you some additional comfort while you’re recovering. And by the time you get to 72 hours, you’re kind of over that hump anyway, not again, not saying you’re going to be pain, but that first 72 hours is the most critical when it comes to your discomfort.
(24:07):
And I do think that that changes things. Before we used Exparel, we used pain pumps, which did the exact same thing. It was just mechanical. So the pain pump would be filled with what was called Marcaine. Marcaine is a local anesthetic. It had a tiny little catheter that would be placed and it would go underneath the skin and the actual ball would slowly relieve some of the medications so that you would get medications slowly over time. EXPAREL is literally just a newer form of it where it is encapsulated by a particular molecule that breaks it down slowly over time. So same concept. No more extra catheters though.
Danielle (24:46):
I was gonna say, patients really didn’t like those pain pumps being removed. So this is great. This has been wonderful. Yeah.
Dr. Houssock (24:53):
Yeah.
Danielle (24:55):
What else? Oh, a big thing, part of this, weight. How do we talk to patients about that are currently actively losing or even the other gaining weight when they come in for a consultation or BMI and all of that part of it?
Dr. Houssock (25:09):
Such a tough subject.
(25:12):
So if anyone’s ever interested in doing a procedure, we always still encourage you to come in no matter where you are in your weight loss journey. I think having information is so wonderful and navigating what you need to do moving forward is there’s nothing like having the information. So Danielle and I always love seeing patients, even if they’re not quite ready yet, but they’re really considering it to come in because we can help you with that. So we do have a, I don’t want to mention a specific BMI, but we do have a general BMI that has been proven to be safe in the sense that once you hit beyond that BMI, your risk of wound infections and complications goes up. So we do have that BMI, but that being said, that BMI tells a very small part of a big story, and we still like seeing patients even if they may not hit our BMI minimum or maximum either way, however you look at it, because it could be that you just carry weight a little differently.
(26:09):
You could be very muscular. And so BMI just tells one part, but it’s important and we do use it to address certain situations. If you are actively losing weight, we really encourage you to continue that until you’re stable, because there’s nothing more frustrating than if you were to spend the time and investment and the money on a tummy tuck and then continue to lose weight and then end up with more excess skin. So we like to see you stable and wait for a good three to six months at least. And if you’re not at your goal weight yet, we still want you here because I can’t tell you the number of times women have been so hard on themselves to not have met their goal weight, and I take a peek at them and they are perfectly ready for a tummy tuck and they’ve done a great job and they’re just being really hard on themselves and there isn’t much more for them to do.
(27:02):
We get these numbers in our head about what we should be or want to be, and they’re usually just numbers. And so if you, let me see you, I can be honest and I will always be honest whether you might have a little bit more work to try to do or it’s time you, you’re good as far, and I’ll say this, I’ll say, as far as I’m concerned, you’re ready for tummy tuck. Those will be my words and we’ll respect if they say, no, I want to try to lose 10 more pounds, go for it. Go do what you got to do. But just so you know, from my standpoint, as far as your results go, you’re ready. Conversely, if a patient comes in and I know that they’re not going to get the best result at this point, I ask them to be very honest about where they are in their weight loss, and if they can tell me they’ve done everything they can and they’ve tried their best, then we do sometimes talk about starting their journey with a procedure.
(27:49):
It might be something like a liposuction procedure to get some of the excess adipose tissue off and then coming back for a second stage to do tummy tuck. That might be the best result for them if they haven’t done the best they can and they know that and they’re honest, and I just say, you just have to be honest about where you are. And they say, honestly, I know I could do better. Then I encourage patients to come back in 12 weeks, give yourself three months to do the best you can. Give yourself 12 weeks to figure out if you can just do a little bit more. Come back, I’m ready, I can’t wait for this journey with you, but let’s just maximize where you can be and then we can go for it. And a lot of patients will go if they’re that candidate, if they’re that person, then they’ll go out and they come back and we figure it out.
(28:29):
We also do at this point, we used to just kind of not have a lot of help because a lot of patients want help and they want to know what to do, and I wish I was a nutritionist, but I’m not. And so we used to kind of just put them out to the wolves, where now we do have some resources for patients. We are close with the weight loss clinic at Hopkins. We have a phenomenal nutritionist and physical trainer, who actually is mine, that can be contacted for information about how to do that part of it. We actually do offer the weight loss injections here through my nurse practitioner, Lindsay, who sees patients for that if that’s the right thing. So we also can be that group for you.
Danielle (29:07):
Yeah, we always, and I know you always talk to patients about their diet going into the surgery and how important it is for them not to be in a calorie deficit to be eating good protein and all of that so.
Dr. Houssock (29:17):
Absolutely.
Danielle (29:18):
We talk about that a lot.
Dr. Houssock (29:19):
Yeah, we don’t want you at a complete deficit because you’re about to have to heal a bunch of wounds. And so that’s why the three to six months we want you stable to be eating. I always say it’s kind of like running a marathon. You want to eat well, sleep well, have little stress as possible because the body’s about to go through something. And so I know we’re living in this world of immediate gratification and same day Amazon deliveries, but this is something you want to do once and you want to do it right and you want to do it safely and successfully, and that does not happen. Nothing good, nothing really, really good and worth it can be done overnight. So you just have to just jump in with, Danielle and I join the journey with us.
Danielle (30:03):
And we love it.
Dr. Houssock (30:04):
Yes.
Danielle (30:04):
We love all of you. It’s our favorite.
Dr. Houssock (30:05):
We love it. We could talk about this topic all day.
Danielle (30:07):
Yes, all day. Yeah. I think the last thing, the big thing is all these non-surgical skin tightening, BodyTite, which we offer, Coolsculpting and all these things people hear about for skin tightening, hoping that it will take the place of a tummy tuck.
Dr. Houssock (30:25):
I wish, well, I don’t know if I wish or not.
Danielle (30:26):
I know. no, we love our tummy tucks
Dr. Houssock (30:30):
I say I wish, but, no.
Danielle (30:31):
No we love our tummy tucks.
Dr. Houssock (30:32):
But, I mean we offer all of that too. So we are technically JEV Plastic Surgery and Medical Aesthetics, so we are a one-stop shop in that sense. We offer everything from the most invasive to the least invasive. It’s the one advantage, I would say, to going to a practice like ours because we don’t have anything that we don’t offer. If you go someplace and they only do surgery, well that’s going to be it, and it may be the right thing for you, but they didn’t have anything else to offer. And conversely, a medi spa may not be able to offer surgery, so they’re going to pound you with all the non surgicals. I can tell you we have seen more than ever, so many people spend money on the nonsurgical first before they got to us cause they really want it to work.
Danielle (31:11):
And in some cases, they spend as much as they end up spending on the tummy tuck in trying all these nonsurgical.
Dr. Houssock (31:17):
Yeah, it’s certainly not cheaper. It might seem easier, but it’s never as effective. And with us even having it here and providing this stuff, if you need a tummy tuck, if you need skin excision, there is still nothing nonsurgical to this day that can replace it, period. It’s just the truth. But that being said, there is a group of patients that we used to not be able to treat because we had nothing to offer them where they were kind of just this barely on the kind of cusp of needing something, a little bit of lax skin here and there, a little bit of texture issues that they didn’t love. And so we really do love those things for the right people. So BodyTite, which also is known as FaceTite, it’s created by InMode, it’s radiofrequency microneedling when you do it on top, which is the Morpheus8 that people talk about, and then it’s radiofrequency heat given in a surgical situation where we use a probe that actually penetrates the skin and creates that traumatic injury that then realigns your collagen in the OR.
(32:13):
And so yes, we do believe in it. We love it. We love it for a lot of our patients, but it’s got to be the right patient. And nine times out of 10, if I think you’re a candidate for a tummy tuck, I will tell you that you’re either going to do a tummy tuck or you’re going to do nothing. And even though I offer BodyTite, I won’t offer it to you. I won’t waste your money. I know in 3, 6, 8, 12 months, you’re going to look back and say, that didn’t work. That did not work. I would tell you there’s a caveat where if someone said, I hear you, Dr. Houssock, I don’t want the incisions, I don’t want the downtime. I understand and hear you that it’s not going to be as good as a tummy tuck, but I just want something better than nothing, then heck yeah, that patient population who again needed the tummy tuck, can with the right and proper education get BodyTite. But I would tell you, when it comes to tummies these days, I would say we use it rarely. I love BodyTite for the face, for the arms. We love it there. We see great results.
Danielle (33:17):
Upper back.
Dr. Houssock (33:18):
Upper back is awesome.
Danielle (33:19):
It’s great.
Dr. Houssock (33:20):
You’re not getting a tummy tuck in the upper back. You’re not. I mean, do we offer upper back lifts? Heck, yes, we do. But you need a big incision in the bra line. Most people don’t want that. So upper back tightening is amazing, and a lot of those are added on with our tummy tucks. So you can do it at the same time, depending on where your needs are. A lot of patients will add things like that on when they’re doing a bigger procedure. You just need to be aware of what things can do, and it’s our job to make sure that you know that.
Danielle (33:47):
Yeah.
Dr. Houssock (33:48):
Wow. That was a lot.
Danielle (33:49):
We covered a lot. I was gonna, the last thing would be before and afters, but you know, it’s always helpful for patients to see a before and after to compare themselves to what they might need. So our website is a good resource. Your Instagram, of course. So if people want to see any of these just.
Dr. Houssock (34:05):
Yeah, they’re linked here.
Danielle (34:06):
There’s tons of them. Yeah.
Dr. Houssock (34:07):
There’ll be linked, and they’ll be mentioned at the end of the podcast, but we are drcarehoussock, HOUSSOCK is my main page, but then it links to a before and after page that I use exclusively for before and afters. Also, JEV Plastic Surgery has its own Instagram. We have our own website that we have extensive photos, and ultimately if you ever want to see more, you can always message Danielle at info@jevps.com and she can get you more if you need them or want them. So we’re here for you.
Danielle (34:37):
I have a ton in the office. Some patients will say that we can use their photos in the office only, so of course, during a consultation, happy to show all those as well. Yeah.
Dr. Houssock (34:46):
Definitely. Definitely. All right, Danielle, I think we did it.
Danielle (34:49):
Okay. Alright. We did it.
Dr. Houssock (34:51):
Your voice is still working.
Danielle (34:53):
It’s working. It’s getting a little bit better. Yeah.
Dr. Houssock (34:57):
Alright, carry on. We have a patient waiting.
Danielle (34:58):
Alright. We do. We have two patients waiting.
Dr. Houssock (35:02):
You gonna get in trouble. Bye everybody. Perfectly Imperfect is the authentically human podcast navigating the realities of aesthetic medicine. JEV Plastic Surgery is located in Owings Mills, Maryland. To learn more about us, go to JEVplasticsurgery.com or follow us on Instagram @drcarehoussock, or just look in the show notes for links. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it and subscribe to Perfectly Imperfect on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.