Body contouring following massive weight loss.

Obesity is a global disease with epidemic proportions. Bariatric surgery or modified lifestyles go a long way in mitigating the vast weight gain. Patients following these interventions usually undergo massive weight loss.

An evaluation of epidural analgesia following circumferential belt lipectomy.

Background: Belt lipectomy combines traditional abdominoplasty with a circumferential excision of skin and fat, with resultant buttock and lateral thigh lifts. Because of the extensive nature of the procedure, postoperative pain management can be difficult. Epidural analgesia has been shown to be efficacious in treating postoperative pain.

Detection of haptenated proteins in organotypic human skin explant cultures exposed to dapsone.

Bioactivation of parent drug to reactive metabolite(s) followed by protein haptenation has been suggested to be a critical step in the elicitation of cutaneous drug reactions. Although liver is believed to be the primary organ of drug bioactivation quantitatively, other organs including skin may also metabolize drugs. Cultured human epidermal keratinocytes and dermal fibroblasts have been shown to be capable of bioactivating sulfonamides and sulfones, giving rise to haptenated proteins.

Truncal body contouring surgery in the massive weight loss patient.

Body contouring of massive weight loss patients is the latest frontier in plastic surgery. It is important to become familiar with the presentation of these patients and with the delineation and effective treatment of their deformities. Because they usually present with circumferential excess, circumferential belt lipectomy treats their truncal contour as a unit.

Belt lipectomy for circumferential truncal excess: the University of Iowa experience.

When some patients with circumferential truncal excess undergo traditional abdominoplasty, the trunk is not addressed as a unit. Belt lipectomy, a procedure that combines abdominoplasty with circumferential excision of skin and fat, is often more ideal for these patients. In this article, the authors review the literature on belt lipectomy and evaluate their series of 32 patients who underwent belt lipectomy at the University of Iowa.