Here at The Oaks Plastic Surgery, we strive to be very present in our patients recovery. Our surgeons as well as our patient coordinators are always available to talk through any questions you may have!

For your convenience, we have put together a list of helpful dos & don’ts after your Breast Augmentation.
Do:

• Give yourself time to rest. Plan ahead for days you might need to take off of work and make sure you have reliable help at home.
• Prepare your bed to sleep elevated. You can use pillows to help prop you up or use a recliner for the first couple of days. Sleeping in this elevated position will help your healing process while you sleep.
• Take your pain medications and antibiotics as instructed.
• Eat 3 full meals a day! It is super important to eat proteins and fibers to help with both healing and strength after surgery. 
• Keep up with breast massaging to help soften the tissue around the implant. (Starting at day 5)
• Talk to your doctor immediately if you have any concerns.

Don’t:

• Avoid sleeping on your stomach. At least for the first 6 week period to avoid stress on the new implants.
• Absolutely no Heavy lifting. (First 2 weeks) We understand some patients have small children, so we ask that you ensure that the appropriate help is there with you.
• Baths, pools, lakes, or the ocean should be avoided until clearance from your doctor. Risking bacteria from these water sources can infect your incisions or prolong healing.
• Exercise should start off minimal. Walking only the first couple of days. 2 weeks after surgery, you can start very light cardio. 6 weeks out, after clearance from the doctor, you can start weight training and more intense cardio

GENERAL DON’TS AFTER SURGERY:

Transcript:

Hey guys, Dr. Wijay here at The Oaks Plastic Surgery. I wanted to go over what can be liposuctioned and what we can remove via a tummy tuck. There are two types of fat. Intra-abdominal fat and extra-abdominal fat. The intra-abdominal fat is the fat that is around your stomach, your intestines, your liver and all your internal organs. That is the fat that we cannot remove surgically and must be removed through diet and exercise. The extra-abdominal fat, which is the fat that is outside your six pack muscles (your abs), is the part that we can liposuction down or cut out via a Tummy Tuck. So, if you can pinch it, we can likely liposuction it out or we will remove it with a Tummy Tuck. The part you can’t pinch is that intra-abdominal fat that we cannot remove via liposuction or Tummy Tuck.

So, here’s a picture of a person who had a great result from her Tummy Tuck, she’s still a touch full, however, she’ll lose that fullness overtime through diet and exercise. Her quality of life is so greatly improved due to the excess skin that was hanging over.

This is a picture of someone with very little intra-abdominal fat, but after kids, her extra-abdominal fat and skin was stretched out. By doing a Tummy Tuck and liposuction, you can see how great hr result is.

So, we promote all of our patients to be healthy, diet and exercise after surgery. Also, with the help of a garment to assist in contracting the skin and fat to get you to your best possible result.

When you come in, I’ll be able to tell you what I can liposuction, what I can Tummy Tuck safely and what procedure is best for you!

Hi, it’s Dr. Danielle Andry, here at The Oaks Plastic Surgery in Houston, Texas. Today I’m going to go through cohesivities of implants! The majority of implants that we use are the Allergan Natrelle implants (Gummy Bear), so, one is gummy, one is gummier and one is gummiest. In actual terms, they are responsive, soft touch, and cohesive.

The responsive sits in more of a teardrop shape, but whenever you put it in a bra, it can push up, but whenever it’s just sitting on your chest, you’re going to get much more of a teardrop shape. They are also a lot softer whenever you squeeze them.

The next step up is the soft touch! This one is a little more rounded and also has less rippling. Also, whenever you squeeze them, the responsive is softer whereas the soft touch is firmer.

The third step up is the cohesive. The cohesive is the most rounded look of the three implants. You can see the biggest difference when comparing the cohesive to the much more teardrop shaped responsive implant, which also has much more rippling!

In addition to these three implants, there is one more implant that I do like to use, and that is the Sientra implant! It is a great in-between option for some of the other implants. There is a little more rippling but it gives you a bit more projection throughout the implant. So, if you have a good tissue coverage, this can be a great option for you!

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi! I’m Dr. Danielle Andry here at The Oaks Plastic Surgery. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Buccal Fat Removal. It’s a very easy procedure that we can perform under local anesthetic here in the office in under an hour. Most of our patients love it, they do great! They have very little down time and very little pain.

So what we do is we numb up the inside of your cheek and we remove the Buccal Fat pad. That’s the fat that goes right underneath right, here where you would normally contour in order to bring those mid-cheeks in and kinda let those cheekbones sit high. This procedure gives you a permanently contoured look. So it’s especially helpful for patients who have that lower chipmunk cheek look.

What we do is we make a little incision inside your mouth under local, we tease out that buccal fat, usually we get a nice size chunk. We then cauterize it, close it up with one stitch, move on to the other side and do the exact same thing. You can almost see the results immediately after you sit up.

You are a little bit swollen and the swelling can last a couple weeks, but most patients have a very easy recovery and love their results! So let us know if you’d like to come in for a consultation to see if we can remove that little fat pad for you!

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey guys it’s Dr. Wijay here at The Oaks Plastic Surgery! I wanted to go over the 4 things to expect from your Tummy Tuck consultation, so let’s get into it!

So, the first thing we’ll talk about is your medical history and BMI. Your BMI is a calculation of your weight and height.

The second thing we’ll talk about after medical history is if you’re a good candidate for a tummy tuck! If you are a good candidate we’ll go over the different types of Tummy Tuck and once we examine your body we’ll find out what Tummy Tuck is best for your body type.

Third, we’ll go over where your scar will be in your bikini line and where your new belly button will be.

Fourth we’re going to talk about liposuction. Most people do get liposuction to their flanks when they get a Tummy Tuck. It’s not required, but we’ll definitely go over what your result will be with and without liposuction.

So there you have it! Those are the 4 things to expect in your Tummy Tuck Consultation! Stay tuned to learn more about your Tummy Tuck journey!

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone I’m Dr. Danielle Andry and I’m a Plastic Surgeon here at The Oaks Plastic Surgery in Houston, Texas.  So today we’re going to be talking about 5 things you need to know about a Tummy Tuck.  There’s a ton of things you should know about Tummy Tucks but here are 5 things to get you started!

So the first thing that you need to know is that whenever you’re getting a Tummy Tuck there are safe areas of liposuction and unsafe areas of liposuction.  This is something that we run into problems with a lot whenever we’re having patients that are going to providers that are not necessarily trained to do these procedures or in other countries that come back with problems.  So let me show you why they get these problems.  So there’s certain areas like the sides that have been found safe for liposuction.  So those are called the flank areas.  We tend to liposuction these with almost all of our Tummy Tucks.  We can also liposuction the back area, that’s another safe area.  The areas you cannot really  liposuction are between these oblique muscles. The middle part of the abdomen, and I’ll show you why.  So, whenever you have a Tummy Tuck like this, your blood supply is cut off completely from the bottom and so that blood supply to the skin then has to come from another area.  If you’re liposuctioning the sides, that can block the blood supply from the side area. So you have to have blood supply that comes from the top right here and also from the other sides that come in right here.  Now, if you do liposuction in this area, you have a potential of damaging all the blood supply that’s now coming to the skin and that can cause wounds down at the bottom right here.  What we tend to see with patients who have had unsafe liposuction is wound healing problems or breakdowns or even dead skin and fat in this area that’s central right here at the bottom because that is the area that’s most prone to this whenever you block the blood supply.  

So number 2 is what we call the internal corset or muscle plication.  So what we do in your abdominoplasty procedure is that you have 2 groups of muscles called your ab muscles or your rectus abdominal muscles and then on the sides of those you have your oblique muscles.  So with pregnancy or with weight gain, you can have separating of those rectus abdominis muscles or you abdominal muscles (your abs), and that creates something called diastasis recti which is the separation of those muscles.  I’ll show you a video here, it is a little bit graphic so be aware of that if you’re sensitive to it of us bringing those rectus abdominis muscles back together with this internal corset.  So you have your abdominal muscles here on either side, and that separation and what we do, we use a permanent suture to suture from top to bottom, bringing all of that together and whenever we do that, it cinches in your waist on either side to give you that internal corset and it also helps with some of that lower poochy area, kind of bringing that in.  

So the third thing that we’re going to talk about is progressive tension sutures.  You probably have no idea what this means, so, progressive tension is a way that we can distribute tension along the areas of the flap or you know, your abdominal skin that’s lifted up and sutures are stitches.  What we do is, whenever we lift up your abdominal skin, you have a large area right here that is prone to getting fluid collections and its a big area of skin that is brought down.  So what some of the modern day techniques are is that we take sutures (or stitches) from the top layer of your abdominal skin called your scarpa’s fascia and we bring that down to the underlying fascia that holds in your organs and bring that down.  Now that does 3 things. The first thing that it does is it closes off the dead space we created by lifting up that abdominal skin and allowing us to kind of plicate those muscles and pull all that skin down.  By bringing that skin down and closing up that dead space, it removes that space where fluid can build up.  This decreases your risk of getting seromas which are fluid collections in your abdomen after surgery and also helps you get those drains out faster if you need drains during your surgery. The second thing that it does is help with contouring. Whenever we pull that skin up and pull it down with those sutures, it helps create that ab look of having that cinched in area right over the middle part of your abs and then that cinched in area over the side part of your abs, so it really helps with your abdominal contour.  I’ll show you a picture of one of my post ops that you can really see that in.  The third thing that it does, is it helps bring that skin down further so that we can remove more skin overall which everyone wants.  

So the fourth thing we’re going to be talking about is the type of scar.  Everybody wants to know what scar they’re going to have from a Tummy Tuck.  The first thing you should know is that we keep our scars low.  We mark almost as low as we can go with getting as much skin from the top so that we don’t get a “T” incision here in order to bring all that skin down.  We stick it well in your bikini line but what kind of bikini do you wear?  We have people who wear the more traditional bikinis that go straight across, but we do have some of our patients who wear the more brazilian style bikinis that come up top.  What we can do is we can tailor your Tummy Tuck to what type of bikini you wear.  I have my patients bring a bikini to the pre-operative area and we actually mark in that bikini line.  

The fifth and final thing that you should know about a Tummy Tuck is one of my favorite things that I like to tell my patients about a Tummy Tuck.  There is a new medication called Exparel, well, I guess it’s not so new anymore but we’ve been using it for the past several years and it has completely changed the game as far as how our patients recover after Tummy Tuck.  What Exparel is, is an injectable pain medication very similar to the kind of injectable medication that you can get at the dentist that numbs your gums for tooth surgery.  What it does is it gives you that numbing medication and it lasts for 3 days in most patients.  That really gets people over that hurdle of the first 3 days that tend to be the most painful after a Tummy Tuck.  We inject it along the fascial area, along your scar line and around your drains so that it’s very comfortable for the first 3 days.  This makes it so that most of our patients hardly take any narcotic pain medication after surgery and our patients who get Exparel just absolutely love it and have such an easy recovery.  So there it is, those were my 5 things that I want you to know about my Tummy Tucks but of course there’s so many more things that you should know about Tummy Tuck if you’re planning to undergo one.  What you should do if you’re interesting in undergoing a Tummy Tuck is come see me in my office, we can talk about wether you’re a good candidate, things that you should know about before surgery, what your surgery entails, what are the risks involved, what alternatives could be involved and what you can expect after surgery and in recovery.  So if you’re interested in a Tummy Tuck, come and see me, I’ll be happy to talk to you about it so that we can get you your best result.