Greg:
Hey, this is Greg here from 99.7 NOW in Big Bae mornings with my friend, Dr. Bae, board certified plastic surgeon. Let me say.
Dr. Bae:
That’s right. That was a lot of tests, oral and written tests, and a lot of exams in school to become board certified, so thanks for not forgetting it.
Greg:
And I see you want to fight with me today. You got your college hat on, LSU. It’s close to mine, but I know you went to the University of Texas for a short time, didn’t you?
Dr. Bae:
No, no. I went to UT Austin, correct, but not for a short time. I went for all four years.
Greg:
Okay.
Dr. Bae:
I think I’ve told you this before. I didn’t technically graduate. I didn’t get enough credits to graduate, but I did all the stuff you have to do to be able to get into medical school, like MCAT and everything. But then I went to LSU for medical school and general surgery residency. I grew up in Louisiana, so that’s the LSU hat. I might just got out of an arm liposuction case.
Greg:
Can you at least get a UT hat the next time I see you? I mean, you went there. You could wear a UT hat for me.
Dr. Bae:
That would be totally legitimate. You are right. Out of respect to you, you’re right. I should wear a UT scrub cap next time I see you. Okay. Fair enough.
Liposuction vs Tummy Tuck
Greg:
Thank you. Now, I have a real question for you, Dr. Bae. A lot of people want to lose weight, whether it’s after having a couple of kids or maybe they feel like they can’t lose it on their own, and they’ve just gained so much weight in COVID. Is there one thing that fits everybody? Is it liposuction or how do we do this?
Dr. Bae:
Well, you just basically look at your body and if you can just pinch the skin and you pinch it and you feel like there’s fat in there, maybe you would think, oh, maybe I’m a candidate for liposuction, but then you also have to look at how much excess skin do you have? Do you have a lot of hanging skin or excess skin or wrinkly skin or stretch marks?
Dr. Bae:
The other thing you have to look at is how much of an abdominal bulge you have, like the upper part of your abdomen, and that could be a sign of a rectus diastasis, which is something when your abdominal wall stretches out because of having kids. You take those things into account, a stretched out abdominal wall, excess skin, excess fat. If it’s just excess fat, no hanging skin, no abdominal bulge, you could just do liposuction. That’d be fine.
Dr. Bae:
Then, the other option is if there is excess skin, then you would consider doing a tummy tuck. If you have an abdominal bulge, maybe that’s the only thing you have is the abdominal bulge after having kids, then you would still probably need a tummy tuck because the only way to fix the abdominal bulge is to go through a big, lower abdominal incision, like you would with a tummy tuck.
Different types of tummy tucks
Greg:
Well, what’s involved in a tummy tuck?
Dr. Bae:
A tummy tuck is, typically there’s a few different kinds. There’s a mini tummy tuck, traditional tummy tuck, extended tummy tuck. I guess some doctors will have different definitions, but in general, a mini tummy tuck is just when you’re removing the excess skin at the lower part of the abdomen. And so that means you have a nice flat tummy, otherwise just a little excess skin at the bottom. Maybe you don’t have a whole lot of excess fat. The only people I’ve found that really fit within that category of a mini tummy tuck with just that excess skin are marathon runners, who’ve had a kid. So they’ve had the kid, they still have a nice flat abdomen for whatever reason, genetically, they didn’t get stretched out abdomen.
Greg:
That’s very specific, by the way.
Dr. Bae:
That’s very specific and that’s really the truth. So they’ve worked off all the fat because they’re a marathon runner and they just have this excess skin. What we do is we make a lower abdominal incision, well below the panty line, so at least it’s hidden and they can still wear bikini bottoms and things like that. And so we just remove a strip of skin. That’s a mini tummy tuck.
Skin removal and diastasis repair
Dr. Bae:
If they’ve got more skin that’s hanging, if they’ve got stretch marks they want to get rid of, if they’ve got that abdominal bulge, then we have to make an incision along the lower part of the abdomen, still low enough that it can be hidden, just a little bit longer than a mini tummy tuck, that gives us the ability to remove excess skin, gives us access to go up underneath the upper abdominal wall to tighten that up and to do liposuction at the same time.
Extended tummy tuck
Dr. Bae:
And then if you have excess skin that wraps around the sides of your body towards the back, then that would be more like an extended tummy tuck. That’s kind of the upshot of it all is just notice whether you have excess fat, excess skin and abdominal bulge. That’ll give you an idea whether you need to do liposuction or a tummy tuck. Then depending on how much excess skin you have, how much stretch marks, how much that skin wraps around, that will help you determine what type of tummy tuck you get. I think that pretty much puts it all in a nutshell.
How to find Dr. Bae
Greg:
Yeah, that covers it. They’re truly answers for everybody. You just need a good consultation with a board certified plastic surgeon. Dr. Bae, how do they find you?
Dr. Bae:
They can find me on Snapchat, Instagram, Tik Tok at RealDrBae, R-E-A-L D-R B-A-E, not B-A-Y, and then you can check out our website, RealDrBae.com and they can check pricing on there for all those procedures, mini tummy tuck, full tummy tuck, extended tummy tuck. We got all that information on there, so that by the time you come in, you have a pretty good idea what you need and you have a good idea of how much it costs.
Greg:
Awesome. We’ll see you next time.
Dr. Bae:
Thanks so much, Greg.
Greg:
Hook ’em horns.
Dr. Bae:
Go Tigers.
