Do body contouring surgical procedures improve medical disorders and quality of life?

Patients undergoing body-contouring surgery often present with medical symptoms resulting from weight loss or pregnancy. The change in quality of life resulting from the treatment of these symptoms warrants further investigation to help fully communicate the potential benefit to patients considering aesthetic surgery. This single-centre, prospective cohort study examined the change in quality of life pre- and post-surgery in 95 abdominoplasty cases; all patients underwent psychological assessment using the Royal Free Hospital and Centre for Appearance Research (RoFCAR) screening tool, between July-2016 and February-2020. Among the 95 patients, 81 (85%) were post-partum, 58 (61%) had previous abdominal surgery, 34 (36%) had >1000 g of excess skin excised, 30 (31%) had a ventral hernia, with only 5 (5%) having no recorded medical symptom. A significant reduction was observed in all RoFCAR scores postoperatively (p<0.0001), indicating improvement in all aspects of quality of life. Patients who underwent abdominal plication had significantly lower postoperative RoFCAR scores compared to patients who did not undergo plication (p=0.037). We found no correlation between the number of medical symptoms preoperatively and RoFCAR scoring (Spearman's rho=0.088, p=0.396). We demonstrated that patients achieve significant improvement in quality of life after body-contouring surgery. A significant proportion of the patients had a recorded medical symptom, and treatment of the medical symptoms may be an important contributor to improvement in quality of life. Currently, aesthetic surgeons do not adequately focus on the medical symptoms treated via body-contouring surgery, which may assist patients in decision-making and manage expectations.