A Reverse Tummy Tuck to Remove Loose Upper Abdominal Skin
Posted April 14, 2025 in Post-Weight Loss Procedures, Reverse Tummy Tuck, Tummy Tuck, Uncategorized
By Dr. Chris Patronella
I want to talk to you about a procedure that has become one of my favorites to perform: The Reverse Tummy Tuck. I would like to be able to do more of them, but most women are better candidates for the standard tummy tuck approach. However, there are a few patients who haven’t had children, and they’ve lost weight which has left them with skin redundancy or looseness of the upper abdomen. In the patient featured in this video, the skin looseness does not appear dramatic, but it was enough that when she bent over, she felt like that skin folded upon itself. And it really annoyed her that she could not get definition in her abdomen though she worked out.
You can see in her “after surgery” results, she now has nice definition in her upper abdomen with improved depth of her linea alba (midline contour) and improved depth of her semilunar line (contours between the waist and mid-abdomen). So overall, she has a marked improvement of abdominal definition.
In her profile view, you can again see the semilunar lines, which I sculpt using a progressive tension suture technique. Those sutures are placed beneath the skin to advance the skin upward and to create muscular definition. In the front view, the issue which bothered her the most is apparent. She had this skin which gathered over her belly button, creating a horizontal line across the belly button. And in the after view, it’s been eliminated by the reverse tummy tuck procedure, which is demonstrated when she bends forward. And again, the nice definition of the muscular anatomy is more visible.
The Reverse Tummy Tuck Scar
The reverse tummy tuck requires an incision in the crease under each breast, which crosses over into an inverted “V” between the breasts. It’s something that can be concealed in most swimsuit tops, and it tends to heal very well into hard-to-see scars. A nice thing about this procedure is that a breast lift can easily be performed at the same time because the incision I make in the crease of the breasts is the same for both procedures.
So I thought you’d enjoy learning about a different kind of approach to improving the abdomen’s appearance, and I’d be happy to chat with you about it at a consultation if you think you could be a candidate for this procedure.
