Occasionally you will see a woman online worrying that she has ripped her tummy tuck muscle repair. A muscle repair is more of a muscular tightening or internal corset plastic surgeons add in tummy tuck surgery when the abdominal muscular envelope seems kinda loose. It helps give the patient a more youthful waistline in some cases particularly after multiple pregnancies.

As I have not ever had to redo a muscular repair after a tummy tuck I have always wondered about people who claim they might have ripped one. Was it that mine just didn’t tear? It is had to know if anything is torn without operating again and few people do that.

Recently I served as an expert witness for the California Medical Board in a case in which a doctor had used a dissolving suture for a muscular repair in tummy tuck surgery. Then a light went on in my head. Maybe this is why these other people thought they had ripped their repairs. Maybe the repairs that I do in two layers with permanent sutures are being done in a less secure fashion by others. Maybe some of these patients had not had ripped their repairs. After all dissolving sutures, well dissolve. It is possible that the sutures that secured the muscle repairs in these cases simply dissolved and the repairs came apart.

Suffice it to say that plastic surgery is done differently by different specialists.

Best Regards,

John Di Saia MD