The Attractive Umbo

The umbilicus is the focal point of abdominal esthetics. Most abdominoplasty techniques do not address the neoumbilical repair, leaving the surgeon to often neglect the importance of making this anatomical landmark attractive and natural appearing. A technique has been developed to finish the abdominoplasty procedure so that the appearance of the umbilicus augments the overall result.

This technique includes liposuctioning of the upper abdomen to create a midline raphe, excising periumbilical fat to create a depression in the central abdomen, securing the umbilical edges to the fascia at 3, 6, and 9 o’clock and using half-buried mattress sutures to eliminate suture marks on the abdominal skin outside the umbilicus itself.

This approach has yielded attractive umbos in a reproducible way. A short video and consecutive representative examples will be shown.