A 61-year-old woman is considering a lower facelift. She has lines around the eyes and doesn't like her neck. She wants to know if this is the right decision for her. Dr. Amiya Prasad, an oculofacial cosmetic plastic surgeon practicing for 20 years, has done a lot of facelifts and has a lot of experience in this area. In his book, "The Fine Art of Looking Younger", he explains that facial aging is a combination of volume loss and descent. When someone reaches a certain age, facial aging can be variable in different people. The youngest patient he had for a facelift was 37-years-old but it was a small scar limited facelift. His oldest patient was around 87-years-old. There is a wide spectrum of people and a lot of it is about genetics and environmental factors such as stress on your skin. The choice of the procedure is going to vary based on the surgeon and the anatomy of the patient. However, there was a time where a lot of people were marketing short scar, and small incision facelifts claiming they had the same benefits of full facelifts. Doctors have different definitions of what a facelift is. A lower facelift usually means that the incision just goes behind the ear up to a point. By this way, the jawline is improved but the sagging cheek is not addressed. What Dr. Prasad does in his consultations is that he educates his patients by showing them the directions a face can be lifted and where the incisions has to be placed strategically in order to access the anatomy correctly for effective results. In Dr. Prasad's practice, if a patient is concerned about their jawline, their jowls, the neck and sagging cheeks, he recommends two ways to address this are through a facelift and neck lift. Facelift involves an incision that begins above the ear, into the temples, goes down to the inside of the ear and lastly behind the ear. A facelift can also improve the neck definition because of the vertical elevation. A neck lift involves an incision that goes into the hairline to address the definition of the neck. The combination of both would address the whole skin, the platysma muscle and the muscle under the skin referred to as the superficial muscular aponeurotic system or SMAS. The SMAS is the muscle tightened in a facelift. There are also other methods such as SMAS placation, deep plane facelift, plastysmal plasty for tightening the neck. In making a decision, the patient also has choices when it comes to anesthesia. When Dr. Prasad does face lifting in his practice, he does it under local anesthesia with LITE™ IV sedation. He has found out that the related issues when it comes to recovery are significantly diminished by doing it this way. His patients recover faster, and still have the wonderful long-term benefit of a full facelift. The next step is that she meet with a qualified experienced cosmetic surgeon and learn about the different options. There are many different doctors with different specialties who do this work and certainly she's going to find different opinions. So Dr. Prasad recommends a doctor who has an aesthetic style that matches hers. She can tell that by looking at before and after pictures. In Dr. Prasad's practice, his patients look very natural. He believes in is maintaining the character and the look that a person is recognized like the way they look five to ten years ago. For more information, visit us in our website: http://prasadcosmeticsurgery.com/prasad-face-eyes/facelifts/

• published: 10 Mar 2014
• views: 22