The Final Facelift Frontier
As regular readers of this blog will know, the boundaries of cosmetic surgery are constantly being challenged and new procedures, techniques and inventions are emerging all the time and the industry is able to offer a much higher level of care and end results than it could a decade ago.
We’ve seen new advances in laser treatments, new types of implants and even a drastic reduction in bruising and recovery times for some procedures. Well now there is another new advance to bring to your attention, this one being in the field of facelifts.
In the past, the traditional way of performing a facelift would be to “re-drape” the skin over the face in order to improve tightness, but this method is now used very rarely. Advancements and new discoveries mean that surgeons now have a much more nuanced understanding of how the face is made up and, more importantly, how it ages and what changes the ageing process inflicts upon us. Shorter scars and much more natural and balanced results are just a couple of the welcome side-effects of such advances. In the past, we might have joked that people who’ve had facelifts are easily identifiable but this is now not the case at all. The huge number of have-they/haven’t they stories in gossip weekly’s is testament to the fact that it is getting harder to determine who has or hasn’t had work done.
One of the main advances is that a procedure known as lipostructure has now become an integral part of the facelift procedure. Replacing the old “re-drape” notion, lipostructure involves removing fat from an area of a patient’s body and then using said fat to replace tissue which has lost its plumpness. Areas where this can be useful can be sagging cheeks or tired-looking eyes and the overall effect is to create a much younger-looking, much more alert face. The ability to provide youthful results without the re-draping technique means that facelifts are now looking a lot more natural. It is hoped that such an advance will tempt even more people to the ever-popular procedure. Some people still opt for non-permanent procedures, such as Botox or laser treatments as they are scared of the aesthetic results of a facelift. Advances such as this, and the ones which will no doubt come in the future, should go some way to allaying these fears.


