Excess Skin after Reduction Surgery

I've lost weight! (Credit: meltingmama)

Weight loss surgery looks great on celebrities – they look firm, taut and toned. But what we don’t see or hear about is the aftermath. Skin, stretched beyond its capacity to snap back, can hang from a weight-loss surgery patient like a deflated balloon.

Take 47-year-old June Simon’s case. She had had weight loss surgery and though she was finally able to reach her ideal weight, her skin hung in folds.

As weight-loss surgeries have become more popular, so have the body-contouring surgeries to rid a person of post-surgery excess skin. Excess skin can cause irritation and hygiene problems.

The number of post-weight-loss thigh lifts and upper-arm lifts each increased 6 percent in 2006 compared with the previous year. The number of full-body lifts dropped slightly to 66,000 last year. In 2005, a record 68,000 body lifts were performed, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports.

And though it has been reported that, in many cases, insurance pays for weight-loss surgery, it's not generally known that companies won't cover removal of the excess skin. A lower-body lift is about $20,000; arm and breast lifts cost about the same. A total body lift is about $60,000.