She booked the visit for her abdomen. Partway through the exam she brought up her underarms, and put it like this:
Her: “I feel like I’m always flashing people.”
Here is the rest of that consult, identifiers removed.
The Abdomen
Her: Can you do my stomach too, but not a six pack?
Me: “So we can do the verticals. We can do it a little bit here. You don’t have a lot of fat, but we can plug it a little bit here, a little triangle here, and then go up and down. And then just remove a little here and use the J Plasma to tighten up the skin.”
The Underarm
Her: What is it? Can you liposuction it out?
Me: “So I will have to make the little incision here on the axilla, that I can get that tissue out, because it’s more like gland, it’s not so much like fat. So if I try to get it out with liposuction, it really doesn’t go away. So the best way, I mean, if you don’t want a scar, I can try to get it out, and I actually have an arthroscopic shaver where I can get the gland out, and then we just cut out the nipple on each side.”
Her: Will the scar show?
Me: “The scar goes in the axilla, you don’t see it. One of the side effects is that I remove some of the sweat glands. It would actually be right on the crease, so it would look like a crease. And then I would still have to do just a little cut to remove the nipple itself. No, it wouldn’t be a thick scar, just the size of the nipple, so it just looks like a little line.”
Her: How long, and how long am I down?
Me: “This would take probably two hours, general anesthesia, in and out, you can go home the same day. Recovery I would say is like five days, but nothing more, you can go back to normal activity. And then exercise usually in about three weeks or so.”
Her: Could we do it awake?
Me: “This would have to definitely be under general anesthesia.”
Me: “I have patients that have come and they’ve had it done and they’re like, oh, that was horrible. So this way we can be more aggressive, but we’re not worried about you being uncomfortable.”
The Takeaway
It is gland, not fat. That is the whole thing. Liposuction takes out fat cells, so it leaves this behind, and plenty of women have paid for that lesson. The tissue has to come out, through a small incision in the crease of the underarm, and any small extra nipple comes out through the same access.
Two hours. Home the same day. Five days to normal activity, three weeks to the gym. Fewer sweat glands on that side, which nobody has ever complained about.
I am a double board-certified plastic surgeon, a Mayo Clinic fellowship alum, and I teach plastic surgery as a Clinical Associate Professor at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.
Ready to Talk?
If your underarm has been bothering you longer than you would like to admit, let’s take a real look at it. Call the office at (915) 590-7900, text us at 1-866-814-0038, or book a consultation at drworldwide.com.
#StayBeautiful
@RealDrWorldWide on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, @Agullo on X, or @AgulloPlasticSurgery on Facebook.