Hello, this is Dr. Jaeho Cho, Chief Director of TheLINE Plastic Surgery, a clinic specializing in body contouring.
One of the difficult problems we commonly encounter in body contouring is the visual dissatisfaction felt by people with low or slim numbers, such as 157cm and 47kg. By the numbers they clearly fall in the slim range, but for the person looking in the mirror, those numbers are often not much comfort. When the weight is light but the shoulder line is blunt or fat is concentrated on the outer upper arm, the visual horizontal width of the upper body expands, creating the illusion of a much sturdier build than the actual skeleton. Especially when a person is petite, a bulky-looking upper body keeps the eye from resting high and presses it downward, so that in overall proportion the legs look shorter and a naturally slender mood is hidden inside a heavy frame. This patient too came to us to resolve what might be called 'a bulky frame' - the flesh bulging out to the side when her arms were down - despite her slim build, and through TheLINE's precise technique we restored the straight shoulders and delicate vertical line that had been hidden.
These are the patient's pre-operative photos.
The heart of the surgery lay not in the one-dimensional act of extracting accumulated fat but in a 'frame redesign' that completely reestablishes the visual order of the upper body. On a slim build with little total fat, even the slightest imbalance in suction decides the outcome, so I concentrated everything on constructing a clean straight line falling from the tip of the shoulder to the elbow. In fact, the more slender the build, the thinner the fat layer and the more easily the skin surface becomes uneven or loses firmness after surgery - a demanding condition. To fully address this, I applied TheLINE's own SVF liposuction technique throughout the procedure. During surgery, the effective cellular energy in the body is left densely in the tissue around the treated area rather than being destroyed, inducing a 'self-adhesion lifting' effect in which the skin settles onto the muscle layer as firmly as a magnet, without any artificial injection from outside. This process regenerates the collagen network inside the skin densely, playing the decisive role in completing a firm, smooth texture that does not become loose after surgery, as if the patient had always had a naturally slender build.
In addition, the question of scarring, which many people feel as the biggest psychological hurdle, was clearly resolved with TheLINE's own hidden incision technique. Considering that the arm is frequently exposed, I precisely targeted the deep natural crease inside both armpits so that the scars would not be visually noticeable from outside. Because the entire suction process is carried out precisely through openings of only about 5mm, the scars are barely exposed unless the arms are raised high, and they were designed to be discreetly hidden in the blind spot of the underwear line. This is a TheLINE detail that lets patients feel free from others' eyes from immediately after surgery through recovery, and over time the marks blend completely with the surrounding skin tone, reaching a level of refinement where even the patient has trouble finding them. Thanks to this, we created an environment where even slim patients who can be especially sensitive about scars can confidently enjoy sleeveless or off-shoulder clothing.
These are the patient's post-operative photos.
Now that three months have passed since surgery, the patient is no longer trapped in the contradictory description of 'a thin build that looks bulky.' Once the flesh below the shoulder and the unnecessary volume around the armpit that needlessly stretched the eye horizontally were cleared away, an airy proportion and the straight line of a slender arm came back dramatically, in a way that makes her 157cm height seem beside the point. The patient told us that although the number on the scale is little different from before surgery, the person in the mirror has become far lighter and more refined, and she shared the sense of everyday liberation in being able to freely wear the thin knits and cardigans she used to avoid for fear of looking broad-shouldered. Beyond simply removing fat, this is the work of correcting a person's disrupted proportions and releasing the real line hidden within. Through this precise sculpting, where TheLINE's 5mm detail meets SVF technique for the body's own vitality, we hope you will meet the most elegant silhouette you have imagined.
