Tummy Tuck Pelvic Organ Prolapse> the tummy tuck will have no effect on your pelvic floor and prolapse since that area is not touched with the tuck. However, in many women who have a heavy hanging pouch of skin, once that has been removed, they have some improvement with their weak floor and prolapse since less pressure is present.
Removing excess skin and strengthening the abdominal muscles can make exercise easier. Not only will the removal of excess skin make exercise physically less taxing, but it will also boost your confidence at the gym. read more on bladder sling surgery and tummy tuck and bladder sling surgery and tummy tuck.
Tummy Tuck Pelvic Organ Prolapse
A tummy tuck at our Fort Worth practice can be a transformative procedure for contouring the midsection by tightening weakened abdominal muscles and removing excess skin. In addition to helping people change their shape after pregnancy or losing significant amounts of weight, you may look forward to some of the benefits below.
Tummy Tucks Can Reduce Back Pain
When your core muscles are weak, your other muscles must compensate to help you keep your posture, and this compensation can lead to back pain. Additionally, strong core muscles stabilize and keep your pelvis and spine in a neutral position, which aids in a healthy back. Tummy tuck surgery tightens your abdominal muscles, which effectively strengthens your core, improves your posture, and can help to reduce back pain. You can read more about how abdominoplasty relieves back pain in a Healthline article.
A Tummy Tuck May Reduce Urinary Incontinence
Countless women suffer from a weak bladder caused by childbirth or natural aging. If you leak when you sneeze, cough, jump, or laugh, your tummy tuck procedure can improve your bladder control. During the procedure, your surgeon can create a slight obstruction using the soft tissues that support the pelvic floor, bladder, and urethra. This causes tension and pressure along the path from the bladder to the urethra, preventing leakage.
Ventral Hernia Correction With Tummy Tuck
A ventral hernia is a bulge of tissues that protrudes through an opening in your abdominal wall muscles. It can cause pain and complications with other organs, like the intestines, and pregnancy is a risk factor for developing these types of hernias. Women exploring abdominoplasty who also have a ventral hernia are often pleased to learn that a tummy tuck and hernia repair can be combined into one surgery, requiring just one recovery period. Additionally, by tightening the muscles, a tummy tuck also reduces the likelihood of hernia reoccurrence.
Vaginal Fullness
Prolapse occurs when a woman’s pelvic floor muscles, tissues and ligaments weaken and stretch. This can result in organs dropping out of their normal position. Vaginal prolapse refers to when the top of the vagina — also called the vaginal vault — sags and falls into the vaginal canal. In severe cases, the vagina can protrude outside of the body.
What causes vaginal prolapse?
There are no direct causes of vaginal prolapse. However, women are at an increased risk of developing vaginal prolapse if they:
- Delivered children vaginally, especially repeat deliveries
- Are approaching or experiencing menopause
- Have certain lifestyle factors, including being overweight
- Were born with a rare condition, such as bladder exstrophy.
How common is vaginal prolapse?
Vaginal prolapse is relatively common.
What are the signs and symptoms of vaginal prolapse?
Vaginal Pressure
Women with vaginal prolapse often report feeling pressure in the vaginal area, described as a throbbing pain in the vagina. Women also report:
- Vaginal fullness (such as the feeling that something is stuck in the vagina)
- The sensation that something is falling out of her vagina
Additional Vaginal Prolapse Symptoms
The pelvic organs are all supported by each other. When one organ prolapses, it can affect the functioning of other nearby organs. Thus, some women also experience:
- Changes in bowel function, such as difficulty having a bowel movement
- Changes in bladder function, such as inability to empty the bladder
- Secondary prolapses, specifically rectocele prolapse (sagging of the connective tissue between the vagina and rectum) or cystocele prolapse (sagging of the connective tissue between the vagina and the bladder).
- Pain or discomfort during sexual intercourse
- Difficulty using tampons
How is a vaginal prolapse diagnosed?
Your doctor will review your medical and surgical history and complete a physical exam. Additional tests, such as ultrasound or MRI, are rarely needed. In some cases, your doctor may also recommended urodynamics testing, a group of tests that evaluate bladder function.
How is vaginal prolapse treated?
Treatment for vaginal prolapse varies, depending on the severity of the symptoms. Many cases will not require treatment. In mild cases, your physician may recommend pelvic floor exercises to strengthen the muscles. In moderate cases, your doctor may insert a vaginal pessary to support your vaginal wall. In the most severe cases, you may benefit from surgery, such as colposuspension, a minimally invasive surgical procedure, where the vaginal wall is attached to a stable ligament in the pelvis.
Vaginal prolapse happens when the muscles that support the organs in a female’s pelvis weaken. This allows the uterus, urethra, bladder, or rectum to droop into and sometimes protrude out of the vagina.
There are a few different types of prolapse:
- Anterior vaginal prolapse (cystocele or urethrocele) happens when the bladder falls down into the vagina.
- Posterior vaginal prolapse (rectocele) is when the wall separating the rectum from the vagina weakens. This allows the rectum to bulge into the vagina.
- Uterine prolapse is when the uterus droops down into the vagina.
- Apical prolapse (vaginal vault prolapse) is when the cervix or upper part of the vagina falls down into the vagina.
What are the symptoms?
Often women don’t have any symptoms from vaginal prolapse. If you do have symptoms, your symptoms will depend on the organ that is prolapsed.
Symptoms can include:
- a feeling of fullness in the vagina
- a lump at the opening of the vagina
- a sensation of heaviness or pressure in the pelvis
- a feeling like you’re “sitting on a ball”
- achy pain in your lower back that gets better when you lie down
- a need to urinate more often than usual
- trouble having a complete bowel movement or emptying your bladder
- frequent bladder infections
- abnormal bleeding from the vagina
- leaking of urine when you cough, sneeze, laugh, have sex, or exercise
- pain during sex
What causes it?
A hammock of muscles, called the pelvic floor muscles, supports your pelvic organs. Childbirth can stretch and weaken these muscles, especially if you had a difficult delivery.
Aging and the loss of estrogen during menopause can further weaken these muscles, allowing the pelvic organs to droop down into the vagina.
Other causes of vaginal prolapse include:
- constant coughing from chronic lung disease
- pressure from excess weight
- chronic constipation
- lifting heavy objects
Are certain women at increased risk?
You’re more likely to have vaginal prolapse if you:
- had vaginal deliveries, especially a complicated one
- have gone through menopause
- smoke
- are overweight
- cough a lot from lung disease
- are chronically constipated and have to strain to have a bowel movement
- had a family member, such as a mother or sister, with prolapse
- often lift heavy things
- have fibroids
How is it diagnosed?
Vaginal prolapse can be diagnosed through a pelvic exam. During the exam, your doctor might ask you to bear down as if you’re trying to push out a bowel movement.
Your doctor might also ask you to tighten and release the muscles you’d use to stop and start the flow of urine. This test checks the strength of the muscles that support your vagina, uterus, and other pelvic organs.
If you have problems urinating, you may have tests to check your bladder function. This is called urodynamic testing.
- Uroflowmetry measures the amount and strength of your urine stream.
- Cystometrogram determines how full your bladder needs to get before you have to go to the bathroom.
Bladder Sling Surgery And Tummy Tuck
A mommy makeover typically includes a combination of two or more procedures, such as a tummy tuck, breast lift, breast augmentation and liposuction. ABC News in San Francisco is reporting a new twist on the makeover for moms — combining the cosmetic tummy tuck with a medical surgery for bladder problems.
An ob-gyn and a plastic surgeon teamed up to perform the two surgeries: a pelvic sling procedure to correct bladder issues that arise after pregnancy and a tummy tuck to remove excess fat and skin from the abdomen and tighten abdominal muscles.
ABC interviewed one mother who said her two pregnancies took an embarrassing toll on her body. “Every day you have to wear these thick pads so that you stay dry. Going down the steps, picking up your child from the car seat, a little bit of exertion you get wet,” she explained.
Rather than having her bladder issue fixed with conventional surgery, she decided on the combination procedure. “I know I’ll never be the same as before I had the children, but I think it will be spirit lifting,” she said.
“I like to call this the ultimate mommy makeover,” said plastic surgeon Carolyn Chang, MD, FACS, who has performed tummy tucks after the pelvic sling procedure at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.
The bladder procedure takes about a half hour, after which Dr. Chang performs the abdominoplasty.
Surgery always carries risks, and one of the downsides of combining procedures is a longer time in the operating room and a potentially more complicated recovery if there are problems with either surgery.
There are, however, some possible benefits to combining the procedures. The costs could be lower, because while the tummy tuck isn’t covered by insurance, some shared expenses – such as anesthesia and the recovery room — may be. Another possible advantage is that the patient will have a single recovery time for the two procedures.
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With the increasing popularity of tummy tuck surgery, most people are now somewhat familiar with its exciting benefits, including a woman’s opportunity to transform her midsection after having children. A lesser-known complaint that can often be improved with tummy tuck surgery is stress urinary incontinence. Award-winning board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Hakimi understands the frustrating nature of urinary incontinence after childbirth or aging and is proud to help patients restore their pelvic floor function, confidence, and ability to live life freely with advanced tummy tuck surgery in Beverly Hills, CA.
What does a tummy tuck do?
Abdominoplasty surgery, commonly known as a tummy tuck, is often considered one of the most transformative and beneficial cosmetic surgeries available, thanks in part to the long list of concerns that it can address. Without a doubt, excess skin removal and skin tightening after pregnancy are one of the primary applications for a tummy tuck. Additional cosmetic benefits of tummy tuck surgery may include:
- Body contouring
- Excess skin removal
- Skin tightening
- Flatter abdomen
- Restore pre-pregnancy figure
- Remove stubborn fat (liposuction)
- Slimmer waist
- Get rid of stomach pooch or pouch
Does a tummy tuck improve your health?
In addition to the extraordinary cosmetic enhancements that can be made during tummy tuck in Beverly Hills, patients may be surprised to learn about the health benefits of abdominoplasty. Pregnancy, weight fluctuation, and aging can all wreak havoc on a person’s body and compromise the integrity and function of many abdominal structures, including the abdominal fascia and pelvic floor muscles. This often leads to a host of unwanted symptoms, including stress urinary incontinence (SUI), ventral hernia, poor posture, and more. By addressing the underlying structural problems causing these issues, Dr. Hakimi can dramatically improve a patient’s overall function and well-being. Medical benefits of a tummy tuck may include:
- Muscle tightening
- Fix a hernia
- Repair diastasis recti (separated abdominal muscles)
- Strengthen/reinforce pelvic floor muscles
- Improve stress urinary incontinence
- Better posture
- Ability to exercise more comfortably
- Boost self-esteem