Catheter Removal | Plastic Surgeon Dr. Katzen Beverly Hills | Los Angeles | Las Vegas

Dr. Timothy K.:

Typically, after a larger procedure like an extended tummy tuck or a thigh lift, or even a body lift, I'll leave the bladder catheter in place. This is commonly called a Foley catheter. Basically, it's a catheter that goes inside your bladder and drains urine so you don't have to get up and down to go to the bathroom all the time after a large procedure like this. It's beneficial for me, because it minimizes the trauma to the incision by you getting up and down to go to the bathroom. And two, it also helps us to measure the urine that's coming out of the body.

After a while, though, we need to get rid of the bladder catheter, and it's fairly easy to do. And I'll show you how we do this in this upcoming video.

What we do is we just snip the side port, here. All right. And a little bit of fluid comes out. It's not urine. It's sterile saline that I put in the ballon inside to keep the bladder catheter in. So there, all the water is out. Okay? And now I'm just going to gently pull the catheter out. So a little bit kinked, but boom. There it is. All done. Okay?

So taking out the catheter, it can be fairly easy. Typically, I perform it in the office, but if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to give my office a call.