Hiding a Tummy Tuck scar in the belly button alone is not realistic.
If there are extra tissues or stretch marks on the stomach, they can be removed. The normal way is by hiding an incision low on the stomach near the pubis.
Many have asked me to tighten their loose stomach skin but do not want the trade off of a scar to remove that skin. They want to have me remove the excess tissue just with a scar hidden inside the belly button. Nice idea, but this just does not work.
Stretched out belly button after other surgeon's attempts to tighten the stomach with a belly button centered "Mini Tummy Tuck." The tension on the small belly button distorts it to this wide mess. That Maryland surgeon tried first with a MiniTuck Abdominoplasty and a permanent suture to hold the belly button to a small size. This did not work. The belly button stretched despite the cerclage stitch. The doctor tried again with his version of a revision belly button umbilicoplasty. Again a failure. The picture above is the result of these two surgeries.
Forces on the belly button are just too great to permit tightening stomach skin. Tension will defeat even a permanent suture put just under the skin resulting in a very large distorted belly button.
You can learn more about this belly button deformity and Dr. Bermant's Revision Belly Button Umbilicoplasty.
Tightening tissues around a round structure took form with the short scar Donut Mastopexy for the female sagging breast. A donut circle of skin can be removed to lift and tighten the breast tissue. A larger circle is then closed to a smaller circle (remaining nipple areola). You can see actual pictures during male donut mastopexy surgery that demonstrate this principle.
Unfortunately, the center structure is then under a good deal of force to stretch. The more tissue removed and or the smaller the circle you try to gather tissue into, the greater the forces to make the circle big again. in a woman, the larger areola can be hidden by a bra. Here is another failure in a Large Areola Complication Deformity in a Male where the forces resulted in a bizarre structure much worse than the original loose skin. The Australian surgeon in that case used dissolvable sutures that went away. The forces do not, resulting in the massive diameter areola.
Another risk of pulling a large circle down to a small circle is the bunching of the tissues that can create a star burst wavy contour as the excess gathers. Some of this does flatten out over time. It depends on the degree of gathered tissues, healing, suture, and many other factors. The actual skin folds wrinkles in a star burst array look unnatural, man made, and more disfiguring than the original stretch marks. This is less of a problem when the force pulls out the smaller structure. Even in the close up picture on the top of this page, you can see the remnants of this star burst like effect in the pigmentation.
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Pictures Before and After Tummy Tuck Revision for deformity from Mini Tuck, Surgery to Revise Belly Button, and Burn Scar. |
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Videos Before - After Revision Tummy Tuck and Belly Button. Explore Healing and Recovery Experiences of Dr. Bermant's Tumescent Technique   |
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Close Up Pictures of Belly Button Revision and Reconstruction |
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Learn Why Belly Button Only Skin Reduction Tummy Tucks do not work. Forces distort and pull belly button to unacceptable size and deformity. |
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Tummy Tuck Abdominoplasty |
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Belly Button Umbilicoplasty |
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Move mouse over image to see before / after images
Click on picture to go to that page.
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