Brachioplasty is the medical term used to describe an operation oriented toward removing excess skin and fat from the arm. The success of the surgery mostly depends on the quality of the residual scarring. The surgery can remove any amount of excess skin and fat from the arm. The incisions are planned in such a fashion that the scar ends are located on the inner aspect of the arm, so that when the patient’s arms are down, no scar is visible neither from the front or the back. This is an example of a brachioplasty performed on a patient who wanted to remove the “flabbiness” of her arms that was secondary to excess skin and fat. The quality of the scar in this patient is excellent and inconspicuous. Again, this is a very powerful surgery, allowing the surgeon to remove large amounts of skin and fat.
However, the patient needs to understand that the quality of the scar depends on genetics, and is not strongly related to the quality or type of suturing performed by the surgeon. With good quality scarring, this is an excellent surgery that fulfills patient expectations by removing the excess tissue from the arm, and this is often of great concern to many people. The recovery from the surgery is not painful. The surgery is usually performed under general anesthesia and takes approximately 1½ hours. It could be combined with any other surgery that the patient might need, such as breast surgery or even an abdominoplasty.ç
I highly recommend this surgery to anybody who heals with good quality scars and who wants to remove unwanted skin and fat that won’t go away by any other means. This surgery is routinely performed on an ambulatory basis, and the recovery is short, usually not longer than 7-10 days.
