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Hello, my name’s Adrian Richards, I’m a plastic surgeon and I’m the surgical director
of Aurora Clinics. My background is in plastic surgery and now I tend to specialise mostly
in cosmetic surgery. So today I’m going to be talking a little bit about SMAS and
try and clarify what it means. SMAS is a term often people use in facelifts, when talking
about facelifts and like a lot of facelift terms, it’s a bit confusing.
So what is the SMAS, the S.M.A.S. Basically the SMAS stands for the superficial musculoaponeurotic
system. So I’ll just go through that again, superficial musculoaponeurotic system. This
is a long word, it was a term coined by a French surgeon called Tessier some years ago.
So SMAS, a long term, basically it means the layer under the skin. So there is under the
skin, is wobbly, there is another layer of fascia which is almost like a sheet under
the skin. So you can wiggle your skin around and underneath that, there’s another sheet.
Those continuous in the neck with platysma, the muscle in the neck, then it goes into
the face, into the [1.22] and as it comes up into around the skull, it turns into the
superficial fascia which is another layer basically of the forehead. So it’s continuous
in the neck, muscle of the neck facelift, the muscle sort of peters out and it’s just
like a sheet, that’s the SMAS and basically in the forehead, it’s the big muscle that
lifts the eyebrows at the [1.48]. So basically it’s a fancy word for a sheet of tissue
which lies beneath the skin which comes all the way from the clavicles, right up to your
forehead. Why is it important? It’s important because
surgeons modify the SMAS, it’s quite a firm layer remember, so you’re going to lift
it up to hold the face in different positions because you don’t have to rely on the skin
as the skin is stretchy, the skin is designed to stretch. So if you just lift up the skin,
the skin, the skin is going to stretch, everything will recur. So the thought is that if you
can support the SMAS, the deeper layer of the face, you don’t have to put tension
on the skin, putting tension on the skin gives you that American windblown look. So everything’s
supported deeper by that tough layer and then the skin’s free to move out on the top.
So that’s what the SMAS is, we’ll talk a bit in another video about how it can be
modified, what can be done about it and the different techniques.
I hope that’s clarified what the SMAS is, it’s basically just a layer under the skin
which surgeons can modify. If you’d like any more information about
facial rejuvenation surgery or any other cosmetic procedures, please either email us, send us
your photos or any other queries and phone us via our UK number which is 01844 214362.
So thanks very much for watching the video, we hope to hear from you soon.