Prevention and management of complications in body contouring surgery

This patient safety article discusses strategies to prevent, diagnose, and manage complications from body contouring surgery. Preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative approaches to avoiding, identifying, and treating complications are addressed. Individual complications, such as hematoma, seroma, infection, dehiscence, suture extrusion, deep venous thrombosis, and pulmonary embolism are discussed and a review of complication rates in the body contouring literature is provided. The article addresses procedure-specific complications and pearls to avoiding complications in these cases. Difficult problems such as skin relaxation and management of the disappointed patient are also discussed.