For some people, a facelift is a procedure that involves lifting your face from the forehead, smoothing out your brow and reducing wrinkles. For others, it means lifting the area around your cheeks to keep your face from sagging too much. Other people see it as a way to reduce the wrinkles around their mouth and tighten up the area around their jaw. These images apply to different areas of the face, but guess what? They are all facelifts! The truth is that the term “facelift” can be applied to a procedure that lifts any area of the face as a way of restoring youth and vitality to your appearance. There are a few subcategories of facelift procedures, each of which targets a different region.
Brow Lift
This lift focuses on the upper region of the face, including the forehead and eyebrows. People tend to have problems with this region when they’re stressed or worried, causing wrinkles to appear in the forehead and the space between the eyebrows. With age also comes looser skin, which will start to pull downward. All these combine to give you a tired, angry look to your face.
A brow lift corrects these problems by tightening and smoothing out this area. Typically, this is accomplished by making small incisions right behind your hairline, then using special tools and an endoscope to access the muscles and fat pockets under your skin. After repairing or tightening the muscles and moving or removing any excess fat, the skin is then lifted and tightened to give the brow a smoother appearance. For those patients who need more extensive work, the entire forehead can be directly accessed by making one long incision across the top of the forehead at the hairline and then pulling the skin back.
Midface Lift
The midface is composed of everything from the area under your eyes to the area between your nose and mouth. Aging shows the most in the cheeks, which start to lose volume and sag under the influence of gravity. You can also start to get a hollow look around your eyes as the area under them becomes more pronounced.
This lift works on lifting up the actual soft tissue instead strictly focusing on tightening the skin. Incisions are made near your ears and hairline and then the cheeks and surrounding tissue are lifted back into position. This gives your face more definition and volume by reducing the droopiness caused by gravity.
Standard Lift
This is the most popular type of facelift performed on patients. It focuses on the lower region of your face, or the area around your jaw, mouth, and neck. Since this is the lowest part of your face, it experiences the greatest pull from gravity. Skin starts to sag and give you a tired, droopy look. Wrinkles are also likely to appear around your mouth, especially if you smile a lot.
To improve this area of the face, incisions are made behind the ears and hairline to access the extra fat deposits and remove them. Once everything on the inside of the skin is positioned correctly, the skin is lifted and tightened along the jawline to reduce the wrinkles around your mouth and give your face better contouring.
So…Which Facelift Should You Choose?
Every patient’s face is slightly different, so every patient will have different requirements for restoring a more youthful look to their face. How are you supposed to know what your face needs? Actually, you don’t really need to have that figured out – that’s where the surgeon comes in! Your surgeon will spend some time going over your medical history and assessing your facial anatomy. Then they’ll discuss your ideal outcome so they have an idea of what you hope to gain from surgery.
Once your surgeon has all the necessary information, they will create a plan for surgery, which can involve one or multiple facelift types, or it could even include other procedures. It’s very common for a facelift to be combined with other surgical or nonsurgical procedures to make sure you get the best results possible. Things like eye lifts, chin augmentations, and dermal fillers are among the most common procedures seen with a facelift.
Facelifts from Dr. Bustillo
Dr. Andres Bustillo’s practice in Coral Gables, FL is specifically devoted to facial procedures, both surgical and nonsurgical. He is also specialized in performing facelift surgery and has gained so much experience and skill in the procedure over the past decade that he now teaches students and other working professionals from around the world his techniques.
To schedule a facelift consultation with Dr. Bustillo and see which type will be of greatest benefit to you, call (305) 663-3380 for an appointment, or fill out a Contact form on our website.