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A facelift is not a very accurate term. It doesn’t lift the entire face. Instead it recreates the youthful appearance of the lower
two thirds of the face and all of the neck. As we get older specific changes start to occur in these specific areas. The muscle and
the tissue overlying the muscle underneath the skin starts to come down and forward. The full, youthful cheeks come down, making the
lower eyelids look older. This also gives a flatter appearance to the cheeks and deepens the nasolabial folds (the creases that go
from the nose to the sides of the mouth). This falling tissue builds up in the lower part of the face, causing a bottom heavy, jowly,
squared off appearance. The lower border of the jaw loses its crispness, as the bottom part of the face begins to blend in with the
upper part of the neck. The tissue in the neck begins to sag and bands often form in the front of the neck, pulling the skin down and forward.
The original facelift operation simply pulled the skin of the face and neck upwards. There were several problems with this operation. First,
skin stretches. Since this was a skin-only operation, after several years the skin would usually stretch back out to a point where the
results were unnoticeable. Essentially it gave a result that was temporary. Secondly, as described above, the underlying problem is not
with the skin, but rather with the tissue underneath the skin. We could certainly pull the skin upwards, but in reality this did nothing
to fix the underlying problem, and because of this while the result looked stretched and often wind-blown, it clearly did not appear youthful.
Our facelift involves moving the muscle and the tissue overlying the muscle back to where they used to be. The overlying skin goes along for
the ride. The muscle tends to stay where we put it providing a very long lasting result. Since we are not pulling on the skin, the end result
looks very natural and healthy. Also, since we are moving the underlying tissue upwards, the heaviness that was on the bottom of the face is
now put back into the middle of the face, which is where it was when we were young. The neck becomes smooth, the lower border of the jawline
becomes crisp, the bottom part of the face regains its nice oval shape, the nasolabial folds are softened, and the cheeks become full once again,
causing the lower eyelids to look young again as well.
The incisions are hidden in the hairline and around the ear, and once healed are very difficult to see. As opposed to previous facelifts that could
take four to eight hours to perform, this facelift takes around 3 hours. Subsequently, the recovery is much quicker, and many patients are
back to work in ten days.
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