Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Articles

Flabby-looking upper arms, or “bat wings,” as they’re often referred to, is a problem that plagues many of us as we get older. It’s also common among those who have lost a significant amount of weight. In my last post, I highlighted what is perhaps the most effective procedure for remedying “bat wings”: brachioplasty, more commonly known as an arm lift.

When it’s performed in combination with liposuction, an arm lift removes excess fat and tightens loose skin, recontouring the upper arm—and shaving years off your appearance in the process. Here, I’ll get into how exactly that’s accomplished, and what the recovery looks like.

What the surgery entails

While it’s generally performed as an outpatient surgery, an arm lift requires general anesthesia. Once you’re under, your plastic surgeon will make an incision along the inside of your upper arm. The length and pattern of the incision will depend on how much skin will be removed. If you’ve ever had a piece of clothing tailored, an arm lift is essentially akin to that. The tailor places a seam, or a dart, to take in the excess fabric. Your surgeon’s doing the same here with the incision.

If you’re having liposuction done, too, that’ll come next. And then your surgeon will tighten the underlying tissue in your arm and secure it with stitches. Using a scalpel or cautery tool, they’ll then remove a certain amount of skin from your upper arm and suture the incisions closed.

You’ll be monitored for a few hours following the procedure. Once the anesthesia’s worn off, you’ll be able to go home. Plan to have someone drive you and be available to help for the first day or so.

New arms, new you

Your arms are likely going to feel tight for the first three to four days after the surgery. Patients usually reference that more than they do any pain. You’ll be prescribed pain medication that will help alleviate both. You also may be sent home with compression sleeves, which will help with the swelling.

If you had surgical drains placed near your incisions to help your arms heal, your plastic surgeon will remove them at a follow-up appointment about a week after your surgery. You’ll likely be asked to continue wearing the compression sleeves for three weeks and to limit your range of motion with your arms for a week or two. It’s a good idea to plan on being out of work for a couple of weeks.

The silver lining: You should notice a dramatic difference in your arms right away. Even with the swelling that will follow the surgery, your upper arms will look slimmer and toned. And that’s only going to improve over the weeks ahead as the swelling subsides.

With a balanced diet and a consistent exercise regimen, those results will be long-lasting.

Many would probably say that their hands betray their age. They typically receive as much exposure to the sun as our faces, but we devote a lot less self-care to the them. (Anti-aging creams and skin-care serums aren’t cheap, after all.)

But I’d venture to say that even more of us are self-conscious about the varying degrees of excess fat and loose skin that began to appear on the underside of our upper arms sometime during our forties and only seems to have worsened since, no matter how much we tighten the screws on our diets and exercise routines.

Unfortunately, we’re waging a losing battle. As we age, the production of collagen and elastin, two proteins that help our skin stay plump, firm, and smooth, slows down, which results in areas of lax, aging skin. We usually notice it first on our faces and necks, but it can occur anywhere on the body. Similarly, our metabolism also slows with age, making it harder to shed pockets of unwanted fat.

That said, with the right tools, there are ways to regain the upper hand over Mother Nature—and shave years off your appearance in the process. One of the most effective among them is a procedure called a brachioplasty, more commonly known as an arm lift. Usually performed as an outpatient surgery, an arm lift permanently recontours the upper arm, tightening loose skin that stems from aging or a significant weight-loss.

The surgery is often combined with liposuction to remove excess fat and give arms a more toned look. The reason why liposuction alone isn’t enough to remedy so-called “bat wings” is because it doesn’t address sagging skin. To achieve a successful result with just liposuction, you need skin that’s essentially going to shrink-wrap itself once the fat’s removed. In order to do that, the skin needs to be thick, young, and have minimal sun damage and stretch marks. Which, of course, is asking a lot.

If you can check all those boxes, a less invasive procedure, like CoolSculpting, may be a better fit for you.

There are also a number of minimally-invasive treatments that address loose, sagging skin, such as radiofrequency tightening, but they generally don’t yield the dramatic results that surgical procedures, like an arm lift, do. And that’s because the surgical procedures remove some skin in order to recontour the area.

I’ll discuss what exactly happens during an arm lift, as well as what the recovery’s like, in my next post. In the meantime, as you continue to read up on arm lifts, look for board-certified plastic surgeons who offer both surgical and non-surgical solutions. Universal as “bat wings” may be, you deserve to have a treatment plan tailored to your particular needs and goals.