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Am I a candidate for a face/neck/eye surgery?
After reviewing my photos, am I a candidate for a face//neck/eye lift? I feel my skin
is droopy. Any comments and recommendations would be appreciated.
Thank you for your question!
You submitted a serious of photos with a question are you a candidate for eye, neck and face
lift. And you feel like your skin is sagging. The photos you submitted are from interesting
angles are certainly helpful for me to make a basic assessment of your situation. Most
importantly, you already evaluated and noticed sagging of the skin so clearly, there is significant
enough change.
I wrote a book a few years ago called "The Fine Art of Looking Younger" and what I have
always focused on in my practice is aesthetic where people who come to me want to look like
themselves the way they looked a few years ago. So I think I recognize a little just
form the simplicity of your question that the presence of sagging skin is enough of
a change that you don't feel like you look like yourself. So this question therefore
mean that there are areas in your eyes that have changed as well as areas in the face
and neck that have changed.
When we do an evaluation, we look at people and we do it in an orderly manner. Let's start
with the eyes. If you look at yourself and your upper eyelid skin is a little bit heavier
and there's a little bit more than you had and we do a simple thing with Q-tip and we
try to push it back to show the definition of the upper eyelid and what is possible with
an upper eyelid blepharoplasty. If the patient likes it, then that's what's right for them.
In the lower eyelids, we look at the puffiness. We look at the relative tone of the lower
eyelid and few manipulations with that, it would give the person an idea what they look
like.
To evaluate the face, we look at the descent, the cheek as well as the jawline and the neck.
Typically and a lot of people do this, at home, they'll lift the skin up and we call
that the mirror lift. Usually, they lift very aggressively. But if a modest amount of tension
is placed on the skin and they like the way the jawline and neck looks, then you can answer
that question as well that you are a candidate for a face and neck lift.
Ultimately, you have to make a decision as to how it's done and who does it for you.
There is a lot in this field that has to do with the doctor's aesthetic sense. As a specialist
and my philosophy has been that every face has a certain character and that character
is what I try very hard to preserve. So when I see people and I try to explain what they'll
anticipate in terms of their appearance, I say just think of how they looked 5-10 years
ago. You'll get a sense of where I'm trying to aim. I can't restore everything because
there are many things that changed. There's loss of bone, muscle and fat and other things
especially in middle decades that results in change. But, character of the face being
preserved is so important to me. If that's an aesthetic you share, then you find a doctor
who has the same philosophy.
A lot of other doctor, particularly in upper east side of Manhattan and certain areas of
Long Island, they prefer and their patients prefer kind of a hyper real look where everything
is very tight and pulled. The brows are lifted, the eyes are slanted upward and face is tight.
You know what I'm describing. I'm sure you saw this especially if look at magazines in
super markets.
It's a matter of aesthetic and then understanding what level surgery needs to be done. For you,
I would recommend a conservative upper eyelid blepharoplasty because it looks like you have
relative fullness. So you don't want to have a lot of skin and fat removed. With a lower
eyelid, you probably want the lower eyelid puffiness addressed. The outer corner is sagging
a little bit, maybe you want that tightened. As far as the face is concerned, you want
some definition in the jawline. You can't pull enough to make someone look younger.
You can reposition enough to make fine structure. After the surgery, if there is hollowing,
we can address that with volume correction.
As you can see, there are a lot of variables and moving parts. There's no such thing as
a generic procedure. At this point, I recommend that you meet with qualified experienced cosmetic
surgeon and learn about your options. I would also add to that the type of anesthesia. I
have been advocating for 20 years that essentially, every procedure that we do cosmetic surgery,
pretty much all, form hair transplantation, breast augmentation, liposuction, tummy tucks,
facelifts, we can do that under local anesthesia with sedation. We even trademarked it called
LITE anesthesia. So we have eye field personally, if it's a member of my family having a procedure
like this, I would only do this under local anesthesia with LITE sedation. I would also
have you consider that in contrast to general anesthesia where there's tube in your throat,
your body is paralyzed and you're put with respirator. You can say that in many different
ways but that's exactly general anesthesia is. So think about that in your decision making
process because that has an impact on the overall trajectory of your healing.
I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question.