Why does swelling occur after a tummy tuck?
Your body is a very complicated system that is fine tuned to function normally. At the risk of over simplifying things a bit, there is a normal way your body handles fluids internally, and surgery can disrupt this system. The arterial system brings fluid (blood) to tissues to provide oxygen and healing cells, and the venous system removes this fluid. The system is not perfect, and normally some of the fluid leaks into the surrounding tissues. To account for this, there is a third fluid management system (the lymphatic system) in your body whose job is to scavenge up this extra fluid, and return it to the intravascular space. When a tummy tuck is performed, a significant amount of the lymphatic drainage channels are divided, and these take a long time to hook back up and function normally.
