What to Expect After Your Facelift: Recovery and Results
A facelift is a major surgical procedure and requires a recovery period before you can see your results. Here’s what you can expect during that period.
Dermal fillers and Botox® are great anti-aging options if you want to see what your de-aged face looks like before committing to a more invasive surgical procedure with a longer recovery time. However, neither option can give you the long-term results that a surgical facelift provides.
At PNW Plastic Surgery in Portland, Oregon, board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Leo Urbinelli offers the longest-lasting and most cutting-edge facelift techniques, and he works hard to exceed your expectations. While you may think that fillers and Botox can stand in for surgery when seeking a younger-looking you, he wants to assure you that, when all’s said and done, a facelift is superior to any minimally invasive options. Here’s why.
Botox and fillers are both used to treat wrinkles, but they go about it in very different ways. Botox is a potent neurotoxin derived from the Clostridium botulinum bacterium, but when purified, diluted, and administered by a trained professional, it’s completely safe.
Botox is used to treat dynamic wrinkles, those formed from years of making different facial expressions. When injected, Botox temporarily paralyzes the muscles that pull at the skin, causing your face to relax and the wrinkles to fade away. Treatments last 3-4 months, after which you need another session.
Dermal fillers, on the other hand, treat static wrinkles, those caused by loss of volume in the cheeks, lips, and hands as a result of decreasing collagen production. The FDA has approved several formulations, all of which are administered by injection:
Botox and fillers can be combined to treat both dynamic wrinkles and lost volume at the same time, but they’re both only temporary measures.
The surgical facelift, or rhytidectomy, is the third most common plastic surgery procedure, with almost 235,000 individuals getting one in 2020 alone. The surgeon makes incisions along your skin, removing and reshaping the underlying fat, muscle, and soft tissues, pulling or “lifting” the skin taut, and suturing the incisions so the skin remains in the lifted position.
Rhytidectomy tightens loose skin around the jaw, commonly called “jowls,” as well as removes deep creases around the nose and mouth, and excess, hanging skin and fat under the chin and on the neck. The procedure is commonly combined with other surgeries that address lines, creases, sagging, and hollowing in the forehead, cheeks, brows, and eyelids, restoring your youthful appearance overall.
The beauty of a facelift is not only in its superior results, but also in its longevity. Five and a half years after undergoing a rhytidectomy, over 75% of patients still looked younger than they did before the procedure. Botox and fillers don’t even come close.
Dr. Urbinelli is both skilled and experienced, and he tailors each facelift to the individual patient to obtain the most natural-looking results.
His techniques include:
This minimally invasive technique leaves only tiny, “hidden” scars, which is ideal for bald men (no hairline to hide the scar), younger patients with little-to-no neck laxity, or patients who request a “skin-only facelift.” While the results from this technique don’t last as long, they’re associated with less downtime following surgery, a definite perk.
This innovative technique focuses on lifting the muscle, fat, and loose skin on the lower two-thirds of the face. Dr. Urbinelli tightens the SMAS layer, moving or removing fat and removing excess skin, which improves jowls, flattened/depressed cheeks, deep nasolabial folds, and sagging under the chin.
This technique offers you a rested and youthful appearance. Here, Dr. Urbinelli goes deeper than the sub-SMAS, releasing and elevating problem areas that require more extensive work than a traditional facelift and ensuring longer-lasting results.
If your face is marred by the passage of time and you want to turn back the clock, a facelift offers you more substantial and longer-lasting results than either dermal fillers or Botox. To find out if you’re a good candidate for this procedure, call PNW Plastic Surgery at 503-208-2348 to schedule a consultation with Dr. Urbinelli.
