CONDITIONS IMPROVED
Eye bags, sagging facial and/or neck skin.
BENEFITS
Gain a more youthful contour to your face, erasing years from your appearance.
THE DETAILS
Full facelift, mini facelift, lunchtime lift, thread lift, light lift, etc. The list goes on and on for different terms that individual physicians and the lay press will use to describe surgical rejuvenation of the face. All these terms make our heads spin, too. The days of the old ‘skin tightening’ procedure that made some comedians look like the Joker character on the Batman series is, thankfully, over. Facelift procedures address sagging, not wrinkles. Current lifting procedures done on the face have two things in common:
- They fight the downward migration of the facial soft tissues that results over time
- These procedures are most effectively done in the tissues under the skin
It doesn’t make sense to pull just on the skin to make the face look younger. The skin, everywhere on our body, has the ability to grow when under tension. Think about the skin of the abdomen over a growing pregnancy. If one pulls only on the skin, it will quickly grow to relieve the tension. It is the soft tissues that are under the skin (called the SMAS layer) that falls until it hits the ‘weld line’ between our skin and muscles at the juncture of the nose and mouth and the jaw line. That’s why we get the characteristic grooves along our mouth, marionette lines and the jowl. Any modern facelift is designed to address this descent and re-suspend that sagging SMAS layer back up to solid bony structures. When done correctly, it results in a youthful and refined – but not overdone – appearance. These procedures are modified to fit each individual’s specific situation, since no two of us are the same. Facelifts are done both in the office and in the surgical center, depending on the anesthetic requirements. These procedures should result in an immediate, natural and youthful appearance, with minimal down time.
This information is for educational purposes only and not intended to render medical advice.
For more information please visit the American Society of Plastic Surgeons website.
