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Brachioplasty in Overweight Patients: The Fat Grafting Role

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Fat Transfer in Plastic Surgery

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Abstract

Arm-related deformity is an emergent complaint by plastic surgery patients, due to the increasing of people requesting surgery after massive weight loss or senile aging. Brachioplasty is the body contouring procedure able to reshape of the upper arm by removing the heavy hanging tissue and fat grafting, as conceived as “lipostructure”, may support brachioplasty procedure due to its role in correcting small defects and improving scarring.

Brachioplasty is recommended in massive weight loss patients when they reach a BMI ≤ 30.0 kg/m2, weight stability of 12 months, and the absence or the resolution of physical and psychological disorder, which may jeopardize the outcomes. Otherwise it may be performed for esthetic purpose, in patient with arms’ deformity related to senile skin aging, for which the surgical indication comes from the patient requests related to personal discomfort. Lipostructure and liposculpting found their rationale in the asymmetry of fat and muscular masses distribution among the arms, in the need of enhancement of the muscular groups (deltoid area, biceps, and triceps brachii areas), with differences between male and female patients and in postoperative brachioplasty scars, which represent an incidental but common outcome.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinic of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Franco Bassetto & Paolo Marchica

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  1. Franco Bassetto
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  2. Paolo Marchica
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plastic surgery, Plastic Surgery - University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Alberto Di Giuseppe

  2. Univ of Padova, Plastic Surgery Clinic, Padova, Italy

    Franco Bassetto

  3. The Center for Plastic Surgery at Metroderm, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Foad Nahai

1 Electronic Supplementary Material

Fat grafting is injected through the arm surgical incision, after subcuticular running suture is completed, to correct residual deformities and asymmetries. Further stab incisions may be performed to correct defects far from the incision (MOV 108341 kb)

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Bassetto, F., Marchica, P. (2023). Brachioplasty in Overweight Patients: The Fat Grafting Role. In: Di Giuseppe, A., Bassetto, F., Nahai, F. (eds) Fat Transfer in Plastic Surgery. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10881-5_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10881-5_29

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-10880-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-10881-5

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