Answer:
Although early authors had warned against combining abdominoplasty with intra-abdominal procedures because of an increased risk of complications such as pulmonary embolism compared to abdominoplasty alone, subsequent studies had shown combined procedures to be reasonably safe with no greater complication rate than those of uncombined intra-abdominal procedures. Hester et al. reported an incidence of pulmonary emboli in patients having a combined abdominoplasty and intra-abdominal or pelvic procedure of 1.7% which is comparable to complication rates reported in general surgery cases (approximately 1.5%) and compares favorably to gynecological complication rates (up to 5%). The authors found that obesity was the single most important factor in development of pulmonary embolus regardless if a procedure was combined or not. While combined patients were more likely to require blood transfusion, no immediate or long-term morbidity associated with the transfusions were identified in their study.