Abdominoplasty: agony and ecstasy.

A review of 102 consecutive patients was made. Stress is given to the standard of excellence, which should be an attempt to re-create an hour-glass contour (certainly in all thin patients and perhaps to a certain extent even in the obese patient). A row of sutures (approximately 3 mm apart) is placed in the rectus fascia tightening it as much as each suture will tolerate. With this row of numerous sutures, the intense pull that gives the superb contour is distributed more evenly than in a lesser number of sutures. In the obese patient the superior flap must be defatted for about a centimeter, just to the subdermal level, in order to correct the asymmetry of thickness of the superior flap as opposed to the thinness of the pubic skin.