With advancing years the tissues of the face descend with gravity.
Typically the jowls and neck become heavy and this gives a rather square appearance to the face rather than the heart-shaped appearance which characterises youth. From the side, the angle between the jaw and the neck is lost with time.
Facelift rejuvenates the lower face and neck by pulling loose, heavy tissues from the jowls and the neck up and back. This restores the definition of the jaw from the front and the side and this may ‘wind the clock back’ by 10 years or more.
The Procedure
A surgical cut is made along the hairline in the temple, and continued down the front of the ear, around behind the ear and onto the scalp behind the ear. The skin of the cheek and neck is separated from the underlying layers. Once this is done a deeper layer in the cheek (‘SMAS’) is tightened with stitches – this manoeuvre lifts the loose skin and tissues of the jowl and neck. The skin is laid back down and the excess is trimmed away. The skin is stitched neatly with an absorbable stitch, hidden under the skin.
Facelift will not improve the quality of your skin and it will not deal with pores or fine wrinkles especially those around the lips and eyes.
Other treatments to improve the quality and thickness of your skin (creams / peels / laser treatment) may be helpful to fully rejuvenate the face. Eyelid surgery is frequently combined with a facelift to rejuvenate the eyes.
