Demographic Factors, Outcomes, and Complications in Abdominal Contouring Surgery After Massive Weight Loss in a Developing Country

Abstract

Few reports about body contouring surgery after massive weight loss (MWL) have been produced in the developing countries. As Mexico is considered a developing country, we performed a retrospective analysis of medical records of patients who underwent this type of surgery to evaluate their demographic characteristics as well as their outcomes and complications. Results from 684 patients with MWL, 69 (10%) had abdominoplasty; the type of abdominoplasty influenced the operative time, bleeding, and complications (P < 0.05); the body mass index influenced the weight of resected tissue (P < 0.000) and hospital stay (P < 0.020), but did not affect the type of abdominoplasty performed, surgical time, complications, reoperation, or transfusion rates. In contrast with the developed countries, in these procedures, operating time was higher and the patients had more surgical bleeding with higher rates of transfusion and a longer hospital stay, but with the same clinical results and percentage of complications.