Hello! I'm Adrian Richards. I'm a plastic surgeon and I'm going to talk a little bit today about the different types of face lift, because there's an awful lot of different types of face lifts. Often it's very confusing for anyone who doesn't have any specific knowledge about face lift to really understand different variations.
The way I think about face lifts is they are divided into short scar or full face lifts. So the short scar face lift is often known as a MACS face lift, the acronym stands for Minimal Access, which basically means short scar, Cranial Suspension, which essentially means that the tissues of the skin underneath the skin of the face are held up with permanent stitches to the fascia in the temple area, which is very firm. That's the cranial suspension area.
A face lift can either be a short scar which typically involves a scar in the ear line, ear hidden, and in front of the ear. So in any face or neck lift, there will be an incision in front of the ear, whereas short scar face lift differs from a full face lift, as a full face lift involves a further scar, going up in the fold behind the ear and back into the ear. Who will benefit from a MACS face lift or short scar face lift, are typically these patients who are younger, normally in their 40s, early 50s, who have some facial aging, some facial descent, but their neck is not significantly loose.
So that's short scar MACS face lift, incision just in the temple, in front of the ear, but no incision behind the ear. A full face lift is used by people who are slightly older, say, from 55 or 50 upwards, who have some degree of neck laxity. The reason for that is that what we need to do is add a vector backwards in this area to pull the neck backwards to tighten the neck tissue. Now, often in patients who have significant amount of laxity in the neck, would also add an incision under the chin, to tighten up the skin in that direction and often repair the muscle in the neck, which is called platysma muscle.
Okay, so we're going to talk much more about face lifts in further videos, but the main thing to think about is in the younger patients, who has just got some bruise, some face lift, the cheeks are slightly lower than they were, so the problems of cheeks is more down here than up here and they are just going to use some definition of the jawline, a MACS face lift which essentially does this, is most suitable. That's the patients typically 40s or early 50s. Patients older than that, over 55, which typically benefit from more of the full, more traditional face lift, which is the face and neck lift with the posterior extension which elevates the face, but also tightens up the chin. You need to discuss with your surgeon whether they feel a submental incision under the chin would be beneficial.
So I hope that clears up some of the issues. I'm going to talk in later episodes about the SMAS lift and what exactly is done to the lower tissues, the deep tissues in the face, some of the risks of surgery and the other procedures you can have with the face lift surgery such as facial peels, fat grafting and eyelid surgery.
So I hope that has cleared up some of the issues. If you would love to listen to a podcast of that somebody has had this procedure, please go to our podcast page, where I've interviewed some surgeons who talk about these procedures and some patients. If we can give you any further information, please contact us, we'll be more than happy to answer your queries.
Thank you very much for listening.
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