Greg:
Hey, this is Greg from Big Bay Mornings on 99.7 NOW, and I’m here with board-certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Bae. It’s great to see you again, Dr. Bae.
Dr. Bae:
Great to see you, Greg.
LSU vs Texas
Greg:
Hey, you know, this has nothing to do with what we’re going to talk about today, but football is coming back really soon and our teams don’t-
Dr. Bae:
Hopefully.
Greg:
…play against each other.
Dr. Bae:
They are going to be playing this year together. Oh, actually you all might be joining the SEC Conference. You saw that, didn’t you?
Greg:
We are. We will playing-
Dr. Bae:
Texas and Oklahoma.
Greg:
We’ll be playing… No, we are definitely joining, and we’ll be-
Dr. Bae:
Okay.
Greg:
…rivals very quickly. So anyway, I want to throw that in there.
Greg playing with his Grandmother’s bat wings!
Greg:
But I actually wanted to talk about my grandmother. So I think I was telling you a story the last time I talked to you. The biggest trouble I got into when I was a little kid was she had this thing on her arm where it hung down, like lots of fat-
Dr. Bae:
Yeah.
Greg:
And I would touch it and play with it when I was a kid. And I got in a lot of trouble for doing that. And I was just wondering other than, you know, lifting weights and trying to tone yourself, what if you have something like that? Is there any way to fix all that hang-down from your arm? I don’t even know what it’s called.
Arm lipo vs Arm lift
Dr. Bae:
Yeah. Right. It’s not the nicest word, but patients come in and use the term bat wings. They come in saying they want to get rid of their bat wings. And I’m sure if your grandmother had bat wings, it’s like totally impossible for you to resist as a child, or maybe even now, to play with the bat wings. That does sound kind of fun. But yeah, bat wings is just the excess skin, excess fat that people get. Sometimes it happens with patients after they’ve had massive weight loss, and it really just depends on which procedure is appropriate for them based on the quality of their skin.
Dr. Bae:
So there’s the two options are arm liposuction or an arm lift, which can also be combined with arm liposuction. But if it’s somebody that’s got really good quality skin and they’ve got a lot of fullness to their arm but maybe doesn’t hang down as much as you’re describing, if they’ve got good quality skin, you can really just do arm liposuction and you can make the incision at the elbow and one at the front of the shoulder. And through those two tiny incisions that can be well hidden, you can go in, suck out a lot of fat, and if they have good quality skin like I mentioned, the skin will tighten up and arm liposuction is all they need to do.
Dr. Bae:
And if it’s somebody that I’m not sure if they have good quality skin, I will still start with the arm liposuction, at least I’ll offer it to them, because if they have to go to an arm lift, then that’s a longer scar. It goes along the entire, I don’t know if you can see this in the video, but the incision goes all along the inside of the arm and it’s kind of an unattractive scar. And so you got to really make sure patients are prepared for that before you do an arm lift on them. And you have to do an arm lift if they don’t have good quality skin, it’s just really hanging down, you’re afraid that arm liposuction alone won’t allow the skin to tighten adequately. And so then that’s when you make that decision to do an arm lift.
Greg:
But it can be fixed. One way or the other, it can be fixed.
Risk of scars with an arm lift
Dr. Bae:
Correct. It can be fixed. And the patients are usually very happy with it. The thing I found is that if they come in and they’re so over it, they’re unhappy with the hanging skin, and they ask for an arm lift and they know that there’s going to be that incision, then they are mentally ready. I find that they’ve done enough research online. They’ve seen the scars. Because the reason the scar is not that attractive is that we always like to make incisions as thin as possible, and scars will start to thicken or widen if there’s too much tension on the incision. And we typically can avoid putting tension on the incision, but when it comes to an arm lift, because we’re trying to remove as much skin as possible, we’re tightening it up as much as possible. And then that inherently puts tension on the incision. And that’s why the incisions sometimes widen when it comes to an arm lift more than other things like tummy tucks and things like that.
Dr. Bae:
So if they come in and they’re ready for an arm lift mentally, then they’re usually very happy with it. And then they’re okay with the scar at that point.
Greg:
I mean, just like everything else in life-
Dr. Bae:
Because they’re tired of their grandkids playing with the flopping, hanging skin.
Greg:
Well, exactly. I mean, when you’re a kid, you do those kind of things. I learned very quickly to not do that ever again. But you know what? Like with everything else, Dr. Bae, you can fix almost anything.
Dr. Bae:
That is true. The magic and the wonderment and the technology of plastic surgery. It definitely allows everybody to get something done eventually.
Greg:
All right, before we go, though, are you good at changing a dirty diaper?
Dr. Bae:
I’m much better at that now. I can do it one handed.
Greg:
Wow.
Dr. Bae:
I’m pretty proud of myself.
Greg:
All right. Well, you are always using both hands when you’re doing plastic surgery. I know that for sure.
Dr. Bae:
Right.
How to get in touch with Dr. Bae
Greg:
All right. Dr. Bae, tell everybody how they can book an appointment, consultation, or ask you any question, because I know you’re always great about answering anything on social media.
Dr. Bae:
Very easy to find me on social media. You can direct message us on Instagram @realdrbae, R-E-A-L-D-R-B-A-E. You can also watch us operate on Instagram, on Snapchat, on TikTok, all at the handle realdrbae, and also they can check pricing and all that good stuff on our website, which is realdrbae.com. So never a reason or an excuse not to be able to get in touch with us or get the answer to your question that you’ve been seeking so desperately.
Greg:
All right. Thanks, Dr. Bae. Have a good one.
Dr. Bae:
My pleasure. Great seeing you.
