Three Simple Ways to Enhance Your Facelift Results
The most common concern we have about our face as we age is the old and sad appearance of our face. We are healthier and living and working longer—you want to look as good as you feel inside. That’s why there are so many options out there to rejuvenate your face. The most popular treatments still are nonsurgical as most people understandably get anxious when considering surgery. Injectable treatments like Botox and fillers are super popular. Energy based devices that use energy to try and tighten tissues are also gaining popularity. However, the most effective and longest lasting option remains a facelift. While a lower facelift will significantly rejuvenate your face, there are some additional treatments you can consider to get an even more amazing result. Three simple options include a chin implant, upper lip lift, and CO2 laser resurfacing.
A facelift resuspends your sagging muscular and skin tissues to a more youthful position. A good facelift will make you look more refreshed without looking unnatural. Restoring a strong, more youthful jawline is a key result. Softening of your deep nasolabial folds and frown lines will help make you look more rested. A facelift done by itself will achieve a great result that should last 8 to 10 years. You will feel better about yourself; this positive self image also promotes better mental and emotional health. But if you’re interested in additional treatments that will enhance this nice result, you should consider these three simple options.
Many patients will have a slightly weak chin. A facelift suspends your sagging tissue backwards to a more natural and youthful position. The key structure to suspend is the superficial muscular aponeurotic system (SMAS). This will improve your unwanted jowling you see at the jawline. After this, there will be excess skin that will also be cut and the wounds carefully sutured. But you can get an even nicer straighter jawline if you add a chin implant. The chin implant pulls the tissue FORWARDs. By doing a facelift and a chin implant, you achieve a straighter jawline by pulling the tissue from two directions. A chin implant is a simple and safe surgery. The same incision under your chin I use for a facelift will be used to develop pockets for the chin implant. Once the implant is positioned properly, it is secured with sutures and the wound closed carefully. The precise pocket will quickly scar down and secure the implant. Risks are minimal and add no additional morbidity to your facelift.
A second simple treatment to consider if you want to enhance your overall results is an upper lip lift. As we age, another common development is the elongation of your upper white lip. A longer white lip is another feature of aging. Lip lifts are simple yet powerful surgeries. By lifting your upper lip, the resulting youthful lip dimensions will improve your rejuvenated appearance from just a facelift. The lip lift is simple to perform, and the scar is designed to be well hidden under your nose. There are no significant potential complication, with scarring the most concerning complication. Fortunately, a bad scar from lip lift is a rare complication.
Finally, a third treatment that will greatly enhance your facelift result is to perform CO2 laser resurfacing. A facelift resuspends sagging tissue, but does nothing to the skin quality or texture of your face. If you get a facelift, your rejuvenated face and neck will look even more amazing with smoother skin. In order to get smoother skin, this requires resurfacing. And the most effective resurfacing option is the CO2 laser. CO2 laser uses laser energy to take the top layer of skin off and stimulate new collage formation and remodeling. This process is what gives you a smoother skin with improved skin pigments. You should know this does take about 3-4 months to see your results, so you have to be patient. But most surgeons use fractionated laser technology; the recovery is much quicker and risks are lower than traditional fully ablative laser resurfacing. Here, we use the Lumenis UltraPulse CO2 laser, which is the most powerful CO2 laser on the market. Recovery is manageable, with the most cumbersome part being taking care of your crusting face. But your skin should be healed by 3-5 days. Although you will still look red and slightly swollen for many days. There is no significant pain associated with laser resurfacing.
These three treatment options are not terribly painful. Adding any one of these won’t prolong your facelift recovery. Probably the most difficult decision to make is price. Another factor to keep in mind is total duration of surgery. Though you could theoretically do all three treatments together with the facelift, these add additional time to your surgery. Depending on your health, I may advise to separate the surgeries for your safety. I also don’t recommend doing a full face laser resurfacing at the same time as your facelift. While some surgeons do this, I feel this is a bit too aggressive. After a facelift, your skin’s blood supply is not as good. There is a small risk of poor healing and bad scarring if you get a full face CO2 laser resurfacing at the same time as facelift.t I will often just do laser around your eyes and mouth at the same time as a facelift, and then stage the full face laser at a later date.
For more information about San Antonio facelift surgery, we welcome you to check out other pages on our website. Kenneth Yu Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is a qualified team of experts serving the San Antonio, Texas area. To schedule a consultation, please contact our Concierge Patient Coordinator at (866) 574-1719 or visit our contact page.
