Guide:
- Why Combine A Facelift With Other Procedures?
- What Are The Best Procedures To Combine With A Facelift?
- Which Facial Rejuvenation Treatments Are Right For Me?
A facelift alone delivers dramatic improvements with jowling, excess skin, and excess fat in the mid to lower face, but there are a few changes in the aging face that it does not address.
Think of the facelift as the foundation for facial rejuvenation that accomplishes most of the tightening, lifting, and removing. For complete facial rejuvenation, you should combine your facelift with other procedures that restore the small details the facelift does not address.
Why Combine A Facelift With Other Procedures?
Combining other procedures with your facelift gives you more complete results, removing the need to return later to address other changes, which incurs more surgical and anesthesia fees, and another recovery period.
The main advantages of combining your facelift with other facial rejuvenation procedures, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, are:
- Saves you time if you have a busy schedule with limited time off
- Reduces anesthesia-related risks
- Allows your face and neck or different parts of your face to appear more youthful in harmony
What Are The Best Procedures To Combine With A Facelift?
Depending on the plastic surgeon you choose to help restore your youthful face and their preferences and the procedures they specialize in, they may recommend different treatments with your facelift. Adding these other facial rejuvenation procedures to your facelift gives you more of a well-rounded facial rejuvenation result, with everything matching, from the forehead down to the shoulders. The most common surgeries we tend to combine with a facelift include –
Neck Lift
The number one procedure to combine with a facelift, which is in many circumstances automatically included in a facelift, is a neck lift. A rejuvenated face appears mismatched and unbalanced against a neck full of muscle banding and excess skin and fat.
A neck lift removes excess skin from your chin, neck, and jawline, creating consistency in your facial rejuvenation results. Combining this with your facelift helps you get the most out of your treatment and prevents you from returning at a later date to address your neck concerns separately. It also saves you money and recovery time in the long term.
Some patients have lax skin stretching from their cheeks to their jawline and neck, so the face and neck are one unit. When one appears droopy and wrinkly, it significantly impacts the appearance of the other. A sculpted neck and jawline are the features of a youthful, conventionally attractive face, and for this reason, we often recommend our patients combine their facelifts with a neck lift.
Fat Grafting
A facelift accomplishes the trimming, lifting, and tightening of excess skin and fat and adjusting the underlying muscles to achieve a youthful contour. It does not address volume loss on its own. We recommend combining your facelift with fat grafting to achieve as youthful a contour as possible.
According to Stanford Medicine, common areas of the face to lose volume over time are the cheeks, around the nostrils, the forehead, the hollows around the eyes, the nasolabial folds, and the lips. Transferring fat from stubborn areas such as the inner thighs or love handles to parts of the face with lost volume like the under eyes, cheeks, and temples gives you natural-looking volume restoration and is longer lasting than alternatives such as dermal fillers.
Fat grafting is valuable for facial rejuvenation because it not only restores volume and smooths out wrinkles but also stimulates the production of new collagen, resulting in new healthy skin that glows.
Eyelid Surgery
The eyes are the first characteristic people see when they look at you. They hold a significant role in revealing your emotions. We recommend pairing your facelift with eyelid surgery to achieve complete facial harmony if you have puffy, excess fat or skin on your eyelids.
Blepharoplasty, whether for the upper eyelids, lower eyelids, or both, is one of the procedures that makes the most difference with an aging appearance. When the rest of your face is tight, wrinkle-free, and youthfully contoured, but your eyes look tired, sad, or even angry, you may appear mismatched because you’re not restoring the part of your face that radiates the most personality: the eyes.
Dr. Markarian often pairs blepharoplasty with facelift surgery. Patients get the dramatic facelift results they were looking for, including youthful, alert, radiant eyes helping them appear as energetic on the outside as they feel on the inside.
Genioplasty
Genioplasty, or chin augmentation, can make a considerable difference in facelift results, as while the facelift targets excess skin and fat that hides the contour of the chin and jawline, it does not add any volume to the chin. Some patients come to Dr. Markarian seeking chin augmentation because their chin has receded with age and started to blend in more with the neck. This aging change typically happens around the same time when patients are great candidates for a facelift, so we recommend adding a chin augmentation to your facelift to enhance your chin and add more balance to your facial contour.
Injectables
As mentioned above, including a filler in your facelift gives you more well-rounded results, as a facelift does not address volume loss on its own. A natural option is fat grafting which achieves longer-lasting results, but injectable fillers may be ideal for addressing some areas of the face with lost volume and wrinkles. Dermal fillers are a great adjunct to a facelift as they can target wrinkles that make a considerable impact on a more youthful appearance in areas such as the nasolabial folds, the “11” lines between the brows, lines in the forehead, and the marionette lines.
Which Facial Rejuvenation Treatments Are Right For Me?
We’ve listed the most common procedures to pair with a facelift to give you an idea of what your facial rejuvenation treatment plan may include. We recommend meeting with a board-certified plastic surgeon with a wealth of knowledge in facial anatomy to develop a personalized treatment plan tailored to you.
Boston plastic surgeon Dr. Mark Markarian is an accomplished surgeon in developing facial rejuvenation treatment plans for patients based on their concerns, goals, and natural contour. If you are considering a facelift and are interested in combining your facelift with other procedures to make the most of your results, book a virtual consultation with Dr. Markarian today to discuss your goals and find out how you can reach them.