Facelift in Fort Myers
The face is your picture of you to the world. It is what you are visually identified and remembered by. People generally think of improving their facial appearance in terms of having a more youthful look.
Aging produces changes in the face that affect all of the tissues, which gradually diminishes that younger look.
Understanding the Face
Our current understanding of facial aging is that it involves changes in all areas of the face including skin, fat, muscle, and bone. We no longer think of the face as merely sagging with gravity. Because we better understand the anatomy and dynamics of facial aging, we can better treat the underlying causes of the changes that occur to set back the face aging time clock. In the past, facelift surgery involved mainly the tightening of the cheeks, jowls, and neck skin and removal of the excess skin. State of the art face-lift often involves the tightening of the muscles underlying the skin, the repositioning of skin, fat, and connective tissue back to the more youthful locations, and restoring of lost soft tissue volume.
The Aging Face
Aging causes the loss of elasticity and thinning of the skin, the loosening of the muscle connective tissue, the downward sliding of the soft tissue below the skin and the loss of fat tissue volume.
This causes the flattening of the upper face areas and disproportionate fullness in the lower face and neck areas. With time, the tendency is to see sagging of the brows, flattening, and hollowing of the areas
below the lower eyelids, which can produce "tear troughs." The prominence of the upper cheeks is decreased, the fold between the upper lip and cheek is deepened creating the "parenthesis appearance" and the
jaw areas become full causing the "jowling" look. The neck skin becomes looser and redundant and the neck muscles loosen and spread away from the midline causing fullness and sagging. All of these and other
more subtle changes can occur faster in some people than others and more so in some areas of the face/neck than other areas.
The Procedures Behind the "Face Lift"
"Face lift" is a general procedure term given to describe what is actually a range of face enhancement surgical techniques that may be minimal to extensive depending on the specific areas in a patient's face that need to be addressed to produce the best result. The trend in cosmetic plastic surgery of the face has been towards procedures that are less extensive/invasive, require less recovery time and allow a person to return to normal daily life earlier. It is important to understand that less extensive procedures are not necessarily "better" and that the trade off may be to achieve a lesser degree of change and improvement. This can be a reasonable choice as long as a patient has reasonable expectations for what a lesser procedure can accomplish. Face lifting procedures must be planned and tailored to the patient's individual face anatomy, goals, and limitations. Face lifts that involve a "short-scar" and various modifications of a minimal incision/minimally invasive technique may produce the changes of improvement that will satisfy the patient's cosmetic surgery goals. The plastic surgeon will make the technical decision about the best specific face lifting technique to use that will produce the improvement in the areas of the face needed. As with any other cosmetic surgery, the same procedure is not appropriate for all patients.
The Mini-Facelift
A shorter scar, less extensive face-lift procedure will usually produce less swelling and faster recovery. A full non-short scar face-lift will produce varying degrees of facial swelling that can range from moderate to extensive. Extensive swelling will require approximately 4 weeks for about 75% to clear, and another 4 to 6 weeks for the remainder to clear. Bruising varies from patient to patient, but will usually subside in about two weeks. The face will initially feel tight and then this will diminish as the swelling clears. Typically, there are temporary areas of numbness that normalize within 3 to 6 weeks. Sutures or staples may be used in the scalp areas and fine sutures in the areas around the ear. Scalp sutures/staples are removed in 10 to 12 days and sutures around the ear in 6 to 7 days. Sometimes a soft rubber drain is placed under the skin, which empties into a rubber reservoir externally to collect body fluids the first several days after surgery, and is easily removed in the office.
Complimentary Procedures
Face-lift can be combined with other surgical procedures or non-surgical face procedures to enhance the cosmetic result and create a more youthful appearance. These include brow lift, eyelid surgery, cheek/chin implants, skin resurfacing, and fat graft injections. Other non-surgical procedures can be easily performed in the office and include the use of Botox, injectable fillers such as Restylane, Radiesse, Juvederm, and Sculptra, non-ablative laser treatments, microdermabrasion, and chemical peels. These procedures augment the cosmetic improvements achieved by face-lift and other cosmetic surgical procedures of the face.
Sustaining Your Beautiful Face
In all cases patients are strongly encouraged to stay on a maintenance life-long medically based (non-retail) skin care program to enhance the results of facial procedures and help sustain the improvements.
How long face lift results will last depends upon several factors including the patient's face structure (i.e., round, long, angular), the quality of the skin (i.e., thickness, elasticity) and underlying soft tissues, the patient's age, skin damage (sun, smoking), and a person's genetics. The longevity of the significant visible results can be from 7 to 10 years or more in some people.
