Dr. Thompson: I enjoy facelifts because they can really make a dramatic change for someone, a way that we can restore someone’s youth. We really can make someone look several years younger than their stated age and a lot of times we can make them look like that appearance that they used to have when they liked looking at their face before they had jowls and before they had a heavy neck.
Dr. Henstrom: In the end, they are getting the appropriate amount of age reductions and changes based on the needs that they had going into the surgery.
There’s a couple of different techniques that we’ll use for facelifts. The first technique is our in-office technique that we use for a mini-facelift otherwise know as a MACSlift. It is for patients that are maybe younger that don’t need as much done to lift the tissues of the face that have descended. Then there is the more traditional facelift that most people think about, where we are doing it in the operating room and we are just doing a lot more for the face and neck. Most of those facelifts that we do are in a deep plane type of fascia where we are really elevating the deeper muscle layers of the face and that allows us to get the best results.
Dr. Thompson: Any facelift that doesn’t address the muscle is bound to fail and by fail it means it is not going to last a long time. The skin may look pulled and the scars will be wide and unsightly overtime. So, both our MACSlift and our full facelift address the deep muscle tissues. As Dr. Henstrom mentioned, the deep plane facelift for our more involved lift and then the MACS also addresses the muscle layer. That is really the critical element in any good facelift. Because of the deep plane techniques that we use, sometimes we can create a jaw line or a neck line that someone just didn’t have before and can really create a significant, permanent change that’s better than anything they’ve ever had.
Dr. Henstrom: And to go along with that, some of the other improvements that they may get that they didn’t have before comes with some of the ancillary procedures that we’ll do in conjunction with facelifts.
Dr. Thompson: Depending on which type of facelift a patient chooses the recovery period will vary to some degree. Depending on which type it is may require an overnight stay, it may be something that the patient goes home immediately after. And then over the next week to two weeks we are seeing the patient regularly to asses their progress, make sure there aren’t any problems that we need to look at, taking picture and just addressing any concerns and making sure that the whole process runs smoothly. That is not just done by us, it is done by our whole team at Utah Facial Plastics.
A lot of people wonder, “what type of facelift should I have?” and that really depends on several factors. Number one is the goals of the patient, what are they looking for in a result. And number two comes to what is our assessment of the patient with they concerns as well as their medical issues we can give a good recommendation about which technique might be best for them.
For more information on facelift surgery at Utah Facial Plastics, call (801) 776-2220 or contact us HERE.