Background: Significant weight loss patients have diverse
soft tissue laxity that involve every area of their body. The
aim of surgical interventions is to help these patients regain
their form, function, and most importantly through minimal
scars. The traditional excisional procedures inevitably end up
with multiple noticeable scars that have mostly equal concern
and complain to pre-excision soft tissue laxity. LAL is a bet
new modality that proved its efficacy in reducing fat and
induce skin tightening Non-MWL patients. The study her
proved its efficacy in MWL patients.
Material and Methods: The study was classified into 2
time-period related groups. They were before and after introduction
of LAL in the author's practice. The study was
conducted over 537 post MWL patients (194 and 343 patients
in 1st and 2nd groups respectively). The number of total
procedures for all were 1235 procedures. The follow-up period
was from 5 M-2 Y. The number of bariatric to non-bariatric
weight loss in the first group was 89:105 (45.9%: 54.1%). In
the second group, it was 102:241 (bariatric: non-bariatric
weight loss) in a percentage of (29.7%: 70.3%).
Results: There was no significant difference in the age,
weight, and regional skin redundancy and subcutaneous fat
thickness in the baseline between two groups (p 0.05). When
analyzing the data it was found that, 1- The number of MWL
patients presented for body contouring increased after the
author introduced LAL in his work, 2- A reversal in number
of patients that had loss of weight through bariatric surgery
and number of patients who lost weight through diet and
exercise between 1st and 2nd groups (112/82:136/207), 3-
The second group patients tended to have multiple procedures
comparing to first group patients n - 276 (1.4) Vs n - 959
(2.9), 4- There was a little variable difference in number of
procedures between patients that have loss of weight through
bariatric and diet and exercise in either group (1.6-2.3 versus
2.8-4.3), 5- The number of excisional procedures was decreased
in the second group (33% vs 77.5%), 6- The overall patients'
satisfaction showed variable results with (81%) of second
group being very satisfied in contrast to (55.5%) in first group,
7- The number of non-bariatric weight loss was higher in the
second group (73.8% Vs 55.6%), 8- Improvement in skin
appearance was more higher in the 1st than 2nd group (79.3%
Vs 72.2%).
Conclusion: The outcome of this study proved the efficacy
and safety of LAL-ST in post MWL patients.