Our faces are out there every day, on the front lines of the battle with the sun and the elements. While we cover up everywhere else on our bodies, our faces are left exposed. Couple this exposure with the general sagging and loosening of our skin as we age and what are you left with? Wrinkles, creases, volume loss —a face that can make people think you’re older than you actually are.
That’s when it’s time for a facelift with Dr. Ferraro. A facelift removes loose skin on your mid-face and neck, tightens underlying tissue, and removes excess fat. A well-executed facelift can take 10 to 15 years off of a person’s face.
Facelift Techniques
There are various ways that Dr. Ferraro performs a facelift, clinically known as a rhytidectomy. A facelift doesn’t address your forehead and brows. This confuses some people who expect a facelift to cover the entire face. The brow and forehead are targeted separately (or they can be done in conjunction) by a brow lift. A facelift actually targets the mid-face down into the top of the neck. If you have extreme creasing in the neck, patients also may opt to have a more extensive neck lift included.
Traditional Facelift
For this long-performed procedure, incisions usually begin in the hairline at the temples, descend in front of the ears in the sideburn area, and continue down and around the ear, ending in the lower scalp. The skin is lifted away from the underlying tissue and fat. To avoid a gaunt look, fat is usually sculpted and redistributed across the face, jowls, and neck. Underlying tissues are repositioned and muscles are tightened and lifted. Then the skin is re-draped over the now uplifted contours and excess skin is trimmed away.
To address the upper neck, Dr. Ferraro will often make a second incision under the chin. This allows better access to jowls and fat under the chin, along with the tissues and fat in the neck.
Limited Incision Facelift
A limited incision facelift, as the name implies, involves shorter incisions made at the temples and around the ear, and possibly in the lower eyelid and upper lip. A limited incision facelift isn’t as all encompassing as the traditional facelift, providing rejuvenation mainly around the eyes and mouth.
Neck Lift
If the patient has significant sagging jowls, loose skin, and fat that has accumulated under the chin, a separate neck lift may be included. Here, the incision begins in front of the earlobe and wraps behind the ear ending in the lower scalp. The neck skin is lifted away and the underlying muscles and tissue are repositioned. The skin is then lifted upward and excess is trimmed before the incisions are closed with stitches and skin glue.
Facelift Recovery And Results
Facelifts create extensive bruising and swelling due to the repositioning of muscle and tissue and the re-draping of the skin. This will last for two to three weeks, and you will probably not want to go out in public during this time. The first few days are not easy, but you will improve quickly and will feel much better by the time your stitches are removed in one week. Facelifts leave patients with numbness across areas of the face. This is totally normal and may last for weeks, even months, as the nerves re-establish themselves. Often, once the numbness passes, you may feel itching sensations at your incision sites. But this also passes.
Unfortunately, while your facelift temporarily stops your aging, the process continues. Many people opt to have another facelift, often with limited incisions, in five or ten years.
Facelift Before And After
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why Choose Dr. Ferraro for Facelift Surgery in Paramus and Bergen County
Patients considering facelift surgery in Paramus or Bergen County should receive more than a generic procedure description. Dr. Ferraro begins by evaluating the level of facial and neck descent, skin quality, volume loss, incision placement, and whether a limited procedure would under-correct the problem. This detailed assessment helps determine whether the requested treatment is appropriate, whether another option would better address the concern, and what result is realistic.
Frank J. Ferraro, MD, FACS, is certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, trained at Duke University Medical Center, and has more than 28 years of experience in plastic and reconstructive surgery. At his Paramus practice, he gives patients from throughout Bergen County a direct explanation of expected benefits, limitations, scars, risks, recovery, alternatives, and tradeoffs. Patients can review procedure-specific before-and-after photographs and more than 350 Google reviews before deciding whether to move forward.
