Hi, this is Dr. Bernard Beldholm,
and today we're going to
talk about belly buttons,
now, in particular, neo-umbilicus.
The question I've received
is can you just remove the belly button?
Is that a reasonable thing to do?
Someone has been to a surgeon that said
they're just going to
remove their belly button
during a tummy tuck, body
lift or belt lipectomy.
And they've just gone, is that
something that is reasonable?
Now, [the] majority of the time,
what I do is I do the belly
button and use your own
belly button to recreate it.
So that means that your own belly button,
which is the one that's
deep, we cut around it,
then we pull the skin down
and then we recreate a
new hole in your own skin
and then restitch your own belly button.
So, that's the standard technique.
And there's just different
variations of doing that.
There's lots of different
variations of doing that.
You can, you know, do different shapes,
you can do flaps, you can do a little bit,
you can shape the belly
button differently,
so I tried to do a vertical
one with a little hood.
So, that is the normal
standard technique to do it.
However, you can actually just
cut off your own belly button
and create a new belly
button with your own skin.
So you push it down, you
create a belly button
with the skin that's overlying.
[...] And that's called a neo-umbilicus,
meaning that it's a new
umbilicus that you created
from your abdominal skin.
Now, the benefit of that
is it can look better
than your own belly button
because, and also it can
minimize scars that you get,
so when we create a new belly
button during a tummy tuck,
and use your own, you're
going to have a scar
around the edge of the belly button,
so that means that obviously
that's a visible scar.
Now, if you create a belly
button from the abdominal skin,
you're pushing that skin down,
you're stitching it down deep,
and that means that you have
no scar on top of the skin,
so that can minimize the scar,
so that's one reason of doing it.
Another reason for doing it
is if your own belly button
is in an odd position,
it's sitting too low,
it's sitting to the side
or it's not in the midline,
that's another reason for
doing a new belly button
during the operation that you're having.
So if, for example, a lot of my patients
that are post-weight loss
have a very stretched belly button,
so that means that the
belly button sits too low
and even if we tried to
recreate the belly button,
it's not going to sit
in the correct position.
So, that means that
you're going to look odd,
it's going to sit too low,
it's not going to look good.
So we just cut your own belly button off
and recreate the belly button
a bit higher up on your belly.
Now, the other thing
that can be a concern,
if you concerned about the
blood supply to the skin
of the abdominal flap,
creating a hole in the
abdominal skin can be a problem.
So, that means that what
we can do is cut the belly,
your own belly button off,
pull down the skin and not
create the belly button
at that time of the operation,
which means that we have to come back six,
12 months later and
create a new belly button
in the correct position.
[...] And the other reason for doing that
is if you're having a big operation,
many, many hours, for example,
if we're operating six,
eight hours doing a body
lift, belt lipectomy,
we're doing something really big
and we want to minimize the time
required to do the operation,
we might elect to not
redo the belly button
because it does take half an hour,
45 minutes to do the belly button.
It speeds up their operation
quite significantly,
if you don't do a belly button
during the original operation.
So, we may elect to just
cut the belly button off,
do all the other stuff and
come back, just for safety,
and then come back 6 to 12 months later
and fix it up for you,
and have a nice, pretty
belly button for you.
Now, the other thing
is that a lot of times
your own belly button sits,
it's common for everyone
to have a low-sitting belly button,
and there's been studies on
the appeal of belly buttons
and how they look and
where they should sit,
and a lot of times they
should sit a little bit higher
than original ones.
So that's another reason
for doing a new one.
So, [there's] lots of reasons
for doing new belly buttons
and cutting your own belly button off,
if you are having a tummy tuck,
I mean the standard technique is to use
your own belly button to
create the belly button
after a tummy tuck,
however, there are options
for doing a new belly button.
And it can be very reasonable to do that.
And it can give you a
better cosmetic outcome
than if you use your own belly button
in a number of situations.
So, that is something that
is not a common topic,
but it's an important topic.
I do a lot of post-weight loss patients.
I do a lot of belt lipectomies,
body lifts and tummy tucks,
and that certainly is an option
that we can discuss
during our consultation
and, if I feel that that's
the best option for you,
then I will discuss it as well
as part of the consultation.
Thank you for listening, it's
been Dr. Bernard Beldholm,
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Questions, again, you can
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