Numbness of the abdomen after a tummy tuck

If you have a tummy tuck, you will notice that your abdomen feels numb after the procedure. For those who are still considering a tummy tuck, then you need to understand that your abdomen will be numb and will take months to recover.

You may wonder why a tummy tuck makes your abdomen numb. The reason for this is during a tummy tuck procedure, the surgeon has to make a cut in the lower abdomen and then lift the skin from the abdomen. When the skin is lifted, it essentially causes the nerves to separate. This causes the numbness because if you look at the anatomy of the abdomen, the nerves that supply sensation to the abdomen comes from the top and also through the muscles of the abdomen, and then they go up towards the skin. So when the surgeon makes the incision, these nerves that supply sensation to the abdomen, particularly in the lower half, are damaged. This is inevitable because the nerves are too small for the surgeon to see and avoid slicing through. Thus, sensation of the abdomen will be compromised. Consequently, you have to be careful after a tummy tuck because you may not even realize if you are injured in that area.

With that said, you will eventually regain back the feeling in your surgical area because the nerves will regenerate. Patients recover sensation after surgery, but there might be small areas in your abdomen that will have complete loss of sensation permanently.

It takes months for the numbness to subside because nerves grow about an inch per month. So imagine that the incision the distance to the area that is numb is 6 inches long, then it is going to take 6 months for that particular area to regain the sensation.

Having loss of sensation in the abdomen after surgery is normal and it is something that you need to expect. You just have to be patient. However, you should also be aware that in some cases, patients never gain back sensation in certain areas.