Facelift

You will return home after surgery with dressings wrapped around your head and neck. These dressings will be removed the next day. Minimal initial discomfort can be controlled with oral medications. Sutures will dissolve within 14 days. Bruising and swelling decrease to socially acceptable levels within 7 to 14 days. Some residual swelling and/or bruising may take months to resolve. Some numbness is normal and will improve as healing progresses. The surgical results are evident immediately and will continue to improve for 6 to 8 months.

Typically, you should be able to return to work within 10 to 14 days, sometimes sooner.

A lunchtime lift or lifestyle lift tightens the mid face. With these techniques, the patient is awake but numbed with a local anesthetic. The skin is pulled tightly toward the ears, the excess is trimmed, and the tissues are reattached to the front of the ear and around to the back of the ear.

You should not have noticeable scars after your surgery. Facelift incisions are designed to hide behind the hairline and in the normal folds and contours around the ear to avoid visibility when healed. Poor techniques that attempt to suture the cheek to the earlobe fail to secure the deep tissues and pull the ear down and forward, leaving a widened visible scar in front of the earlobe. Dr. Schlechter avoids this by carefully attaching the deep tissues to the underlying fascia, which creates minimal tension for the best healing and least visible scars. The scars will also fade over time.

Natural-looking facelift results are achieved with careful planning, exact incision placement, and precision closure techniques that keep tell-tale scars and hairline alterations to a minimum. Additional considerations are made for men with shorter hairstyles, beards, and sideburns to ensure that any scarring is minimal. Dr. Schlechter avoids incision placements that change or interrupt hairlines or hair growth. He also avoids the flawed technique of suturing the cheek to the earlobe, which not only fails to secure the facial tissues but also tugs at the ear, leaving a wide scar as well as an unnaturally pulled “pixie” earlobe. Dr. Schlechter uses careful attachment of the deep tissues to the temporal and mastoid fascia with sutures to provide long-lasting, deep tissue support and lifting for the most natural-looking results with the least amount of scarring. This multilayered approach to muscle layer and skin tightening, as well as fatty tissue sculpture, produces a natural, youthful look that lasts as long as possible for each patient.

Facelift and neck lift surgery typically set the clock back about 8 to 10 years. You will continue to age at the same rate as before the procedure, except now from a more youthful standpoint. You will be able to enjoy the benefits of your facelift for many years after the surgery.