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Home › Articles › General Health › Babies and Cosmetic Surgery

Babies and Cosmetic Surgery

When Should Newborn Imperfections Be Fixed?

By Katherine Bontrager

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Laser therapy can be started anytime, including infancy, Dr. Mike says, though some experts think earlier intervention works better.

Bellybutton Blunders

Sometimes bellybuttons don't arrive perfectly formed, and this is another area where parents are turning to cosmetic surgery.

"The muscle wall of the abdomen grows as two sheets, each moving from the outside to the inside and meeting in the middle," Dr. Mike says. "There's a break in the meeting of the muscle sheets at the level of the bellybutton to make room for blood vessels diving inside from the umbilical cord. Shortly after birth, the umbilical blood supply is disrupted, the vessels atrophy and the abdominal wall opening grows together. In some children, the opening is particularly big and is slow to come together. Intestinal loops can push into this opening, causing a bulging of the belly button."

It's possible for the intestine to push through and get stuck in the opening in the muscle wall, Dr. Mike says. "If it gets stuck hard enough, and the muscle squeezes the intestine too hard, the intestine's blood supply can become compromised, eventually resulting in death to the bowel (a life-threatening condition called incarceration)," he says. "Hernial incarceration requires immediate surgery, regardless of the child's age. Fortunately, incarceration associated with an umbilical hernia is extremely rare. And since the muscle wall usually grows back together, umbilical hernias usually only require observation as they heal themselves over time."

Another cause for concern is umbilical granulomas, wherein scar tissue forms when the umbilical cord stump falls off. "These usually don't requie surgery," Dr. Mike says. "Usually, your doctor will apply silver nitrate to the granuloma, killing the cells responsible for making the scar tissue. However, large granulomas and ones not responding to silver nitrate may require surgical removal. However, it can wait until the baby is a little older."


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