Many individuals pursue and achieve significant weight loss to improve their health and lifestyle. For individuals who lose greater than half of their excess body weight, or over 100lbs, excess, deflated skin may result from head to toe. Removal of excess skin in a safe and aesthetic manner has become a focus for plastic surgeons, and the field of post bariatric body contouring has correspondingly grown with the increasing population of massive weight loss patients. Common plastic surgical procedures address the face, chest, arms, upper and lower back, abdomen and thighs. Though Thighlift is one of the more challenging procedures to perform, individuals often present requesting improvement in thigh contour and tautness.
Traditionally thighlift performed for massive weight loss (MWL) patients entailed medial excision of skin from the pubis to the knee. While this technique serves a critical role in treating many who have excess skin of the thigh, another option exists, stemming from Lockwood’s more superior approach to thighlift with a hidden scar along the pubic crease. Lockwood’s approach has been extended for MWL patients to the APEX thighlift, extending his described approach more anteriorly and posteriorly, while maintaining a well hidden scar. Thighlift results may be taken even further as part of a Lower Bodylift procedure. This talk will demonstrate various thighlift techniques and procedures on adjacent body regions that lead to results greater than the sum of its parts.
The ability to provide individualized care to patients with heterogeneous presentations is critical to successful plastic surgical treatment. To this end, different thighlift procedures will be presented and stratified according to various patient presentations, and this algorithm will assist plastic surgeons in balancing the benefits and drawbacks to various approaches to Thighlift for MWL

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