Difference between a minifacelift and a full facelift?
Hi, I’m doctor Dan Shapiro I’m a plastic surgeon certified by the American Board of plastic surgery and I’ve been practicing the Scottsdale Paradise Valley for area for over 21 years.
Today I’m going to talk about the difference between a mini facelift and a facelift, people come into my office often requesting a mini facelift. Sometimes there’s a little confusion about the different types of procedures that are performed. A mini facelift is something that generally I call a cheek lift and a mini facelift generally addresses just the cheek area and does not approach the neck. So who is a good candidate for a mini facelift? Generally if you look in the mirror and were to pull a little bit on the cheek and elevate it that you see some decrease of the jowl area, that’s what a mini facelift or a cheeklift would address.
A good candidate is somebody who has minimal jowling, has some excess skin along the cheek area, and has a moderately good skin elasticity. A bonus is somebody who has really nice pronounced cheekbones, because the skin tends to drape very nicely over the bone and that helps it. A cheeklift last a little bit longer now the beauty of a mini facelift is oftentimes, almost always that can be performed in my office under local anesthesia with some oral sedation. I can also add other things to that mini facelift in order to improve the result. Typically using some procedure to enhance someone’s eyes in the office or doing some laser resurfacing or actually doing some fat transfer to areas of the face so the cumulative result is much better than the mini face of the alone.
A formal facelift or a full facelift generally lasts longer and is more complicated than a mini facelift. A full facelift or a SMAS facelift is something that I perform that addresses not just the skin but the deeper layers of the face. It addresses the muscles, the fat, and the skin at the same time. And it elevates the jowl, the mid-face that’s the area beneath your eye, and that actually will help fill in those areas with your own tissue. The full facelift also addresses the neck and give someone a really beautiful jawline and gets rid of the turkey gobbler. The recovery for the full facelift is a bit longer than a mini facelift and generally has to be done in the operating room under some type of anesthesia with an anesthesiologist. A full facelift last longer, as I mentioned, Generally it gives a better result that looks more natural and overall makes people look much younger and softer. The candidates for a full facelift would be, people in their 40s or older that may have significant loss of volume or the skin and gel formation and early age that tends to run in families.
It really just depends upon if you’re a good candidate for either and the only way to really tell that is to come in for consultation. Let me give you an idea of which would work best for you, thanks a lot.
