Face Lift Surgery (Rhytidectomy) Pictures

Details: Frontal View. This patient example is not to demonstrate her final long term result. She is exactly one week after a full lower face and necklift with Surgiwire to her nasolabial folds. Since she lives in Puerto Rico, I have not been able to obtain any longer term follow-up photos. However, what can we learn from this early photograph. In another one of facelift cases (case 11919). I explained that by performing a lower face and necklift without performing any eyelid/forehead or cheek procedures, a patient can still have a relatively short recovery. One of the reasons patients get a mini-facelift is to get a shorter recovery time. However, in my observations of both mini-facelifts and full lower face and necklifts, the swelling and bruising of the face is comparable, and the additional bruising of the neck is not only easy to hide, but in fact the bruising tends to travel from the upper part of the neck down to the collarbones and chest over the first week. If you look closely at her after photos on the neck, this patient most of the bruising has cleared her upper neck, but she has a slight yellow-green bruising of her lower neck and upper chest (which is easily hidden.) If you saw her walking through the grocery store one week after surgery, you wouldn't necessarily think that she looked swollen or strange looking, because you didn't know how she looked before. In fact, if a patient has a relatively thin face after the first 3-5 days after the facelift, the swelling can actually make the initial facelift result look better than the final result. The swelling fills the face with volume and gives a youthful look without any shadows from hollow areas, as well as, improving the appearance of all the wrinkles and smile lines.

Details: Right Oblique View. Due to her occupation as a riding instructor, she has had significant sun exposure to her skin which has cause skin pigmentation and fine lines and wrinkles to her cheeks. On this angled view you can see that although her neck is thin, she has developed exposure of her muscle bands in her neck. This was treated with a standard corset platysmaplasty, which essentially sews the two edges of the muscle bands that you can see, together so that they can't hang down through the neck skin. Additionally this corset platysmaplasty, creates a sling or hammock effect which creates a flat area under the chin ranging from 1-2 inches depending on the patient's anatomy.

Details: Right Profile View. On this view, you can appreciate the improvement of her neck profile from the platysmaplasty procedure. Since this is only a one week photo, I do expect the flat area under the chin to come down a little bit (1/8 to 1/4 of an inch), relaxation of the tissues.

Details: Close up of the eyes. Notice how much younger her eyes look 1 week after surgery. She did NOT have any upper eyelid surgery. When the post-operative swelling went away her eyelids returned to the preoperative state. Although she does have eye makeup in the After photo, her upper eyelids do not look younger because of the makeup. In the before photo, she has hollowing of the upper eyelids. On the after photo, due to the swelling from the facelift, she has additional volume (or swelling) in the area between her eyelid crease and eyebrow. This causes her to have more "brow skin", skin between the eyebrow and eyelid crease showing, which looks younger then a hollowed upper eyelid. If she chose to have her eyelids rejuvenated in the future, I would recommend fat grafting to the upper eyelid hollow to try to recreate the full "brow skin" effect seen in youth, instead of the traditional skin and fat removal upper eyelid surgery. ____________________________________________________________________________________. Youthful features have less shadowing (or dark areas) and more full, convex areas which create more light areas. Also, note that in the before photo, her eyebrows are on the edge of the eyebrow bone with no skin showing beneath the eyebrow. Most surgeons would immediately recommend a browlift, but by filling in the hollow area, creates an area of skin below the eyebrow, which gives a browlift effect. Yet look how low her eyebrows are. Now that you see the difference, I challenge you to look at photos from your youth 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's and see what is happening to your eyelids and eyebrows. My guess is that your eyebrows have not fallen at all, and in fact it is the sinking in (hollowing) of the "brow skin" which is occuring over the years. ____________________________________________________________________________________. Homework Assignment: Look at the eyes and how high the eyebrows are in 1)Your own old photos. 2)Photos of your children (and grandchildren if you have them. 3)Models in fashion magazines. 4)Lastly, come back to Locateadoc.com and look at the before and after photos of the browlifts, and see what you think. Of note, there is a much higher proportion of "deep-set" eyes in the modelling world. I also think that deep set eyes are beautiful and my goal is not to make everyone's eye puffy. However, deep-set eyes are the first to hollow, so these same people with beautiful deep set eyes may not age, as well as, Asians, for example, whose eyes are small with very small eyelid creases if any. Essentially, asians (me included) start off with a lot of "brow skin" which ages well.