What can I expect from an abdominoplasty in Sydney?

An abdominoplasty is a surgical procedure designed to reduce excess skin and fat in your abdominal area. Most Specialist Plastic Surgeons in Sydney consider repair of any rectus divarication (the stretch of your linea alba, or tendon that joins the sheath around your rectus abdominis, or 6 pack muscles) part of a normal abdominoplasty. This stretch or divarication occurs mostly in conjunction with pregnancy, but also sometimes with significant intra-abdominal fat. Sometimes liposuction of adjacent areas is a useful adjunct.

There is always a scar for this procedure. The position and length of the scar will depend on many factors. Your & your surgeons’ preferences, your torso & pelvis shape, the amount of excess skin, and any planned liposuction all have an impact on that decision. Your scar will fade over time. How rapidly it fades and how completely it fades is determined by many factors including genetics, any healing complications, exposure to smoking or nicotine, and the patient’s compliance with post operative scar management.

Dr Gavin Sandercoe’s gallery can show you an assortment of abdominoplasty results, but there are reasons that some results do not make it to the gallery. The most common reason is the presence of combined procedures, a substantial change in total body weight, or that the patient declined the use of their images on the internet.

The AHPRA “Guidelines for Registered Medical Practitioners who Advertise Cosmetic Surgery 2023” is being enforced by the AHPRA Advertising Compliance Team. Based on correspondence from them in 2025, it appears that surgeons are now expected to break procedures into multiple galleries if the patient has had multiple procedures.

Here are links to the gallery of patients who have had:-

• Abdominoplasty only
• Abdominoplasty + breast reduction
• Abdominoplasty + mastopexy
• Abdominoplasty + breast augmentation

To demonstrate a rapid-fire broad overview of the potential results that could be achieved from an abdominoplasty, we have compiled a quick list of consecutive patients from 2023 that meet standardised criteria.

Criteria for inclusion:-

1. Attended 3 and 12 month follow up appointments
2. Patient consented to the use of their photography on the internet
3. Photography lighting equivalent on all images
4. No substantial weight changes between time points
5. Not a combined procedure (for example, all patients having any breast procedure at the same time have been excluded)
6. No additional procedures on adjacent areas prior to the 12 month follow up appointment.

We reviewed the numbers from Dr Gavin Sandercoe, a Sydney Specialist Plastic Surgeon who practices in Bella Vista, Norwest for 2023 (so that the 12-month appointments, which are sometimes late, are complete). In that year, Dr Gavin Sandercoe performed 56 abdominoplasties.

Of the 56 abdominoplasties, 16 were combined procedures with a breast procedure. A further 6 patients had operations on adjacent areas within the 12 month follow up period. This leaves 34 stand-alone abdominoplasties for the calendar year of 2023. Of these,

• 7 patients did not attend their 12 month follow up
• 13 patients have requested that their photos are not published on the internet
• 3 have tattoos on their torso that cannot be adequately blurred to maintain their privacy without changing their photos
• 1 has had significant weight loss in the 1 year post-operatively

This leaves 10 valid patients out of starting number of 56!!

One of the most disappointing parts of this series is that none of the 5 male abdominoplasties can be presented on the internet – 2 did not attend the 12 month follow up, 2 did not consent to their photos being published on the internet, and one had a procedure on an adjacent area within the 12 month post operative period.

Whilst this is a disappointing attrition rate, the remaining patients do show a reasonable breadth of results. There is a good range of pre-operative body weights and shapes, mostly standard abdominoplasties, but also some corset abdominoplasties.

They also show some of the less discussed complications that can happen with abdominoplasty surgery.

• Small asymmetries.
• Dog ears.
• Umbilical necrosis / loss
• Hypertrophic scars. Raised, pink (hypertrophic) scars that take a long time to settle down are more common in darker skinned patients.

Dr Gavin Sandercoe is a Specialist Plastic Surgeon in Sydney who has performed over 1000 abdominoplasties and does this procedure most weeks. If you are looking for a Sydney Plastic Surgeon who is not afraid to show you all their results, and does not gloss over the potential complications, please contact Dr Gavin Sandercoe on the contact form below.