As a Sacramento plastic surgeon, Dr. Andrew Kaczynski has been performing facelift surgery in Sacramento at Advanced Concepts in Plastic Surgery for over 25 years. His patients travel from Folsom, Roseville, Auburn, Stockton and San Francisco to seek his surgical artistry.
Facelifts have been around for about 100 years and everyone has a fairly clear idea what facelift surgery is. In a facelift, you make an incision, seperate the skin from the muscle layer, pull it as hard as you can and remove this extra skin and then stretch it tight. Right?
Actually there are still some people who do this type of facelift surgery. Most plastic surgeons do what could be called two-dimensional facelifts, lifting up the muscle layer in a variety of fashions with many variations on the same. Facelifts pull up facial fat and muscle and pull and push it to areas where it once was.
But is a young face a tight face? If you pinch the cheeks of an 18-year-old the skin isn’t tight. As a matter of fact it’s rather loose. It isn’t tight at all. The difference is young faces are full of fat. Note in the picture below how round and full Angelina Jolie’s face was as a teenager and then how much less fat she has in her face over the following 20 years. She is still beautiful but in 20 more years, she may be thinking she wants some of that youthful fullness back.
Angelina Jolie over a 20 year span
As most people age, unless they gain a lot of weight, their faces lose fat. It’s like a balloon that starts to deflate. When faces deflate, skin starts to sag and settle. This contributes to the aging look.
When a face-lift surgery is done, skin and muscles are tightened and lifted. But this face lift alone doesn’t replicate a youthful full face in everyone. There is a third dimension missing: volume.
At Advanced Concepts in Plastic Surgery of Sacramento, we perform what is essentially a modern facelift where volume is added as needed. The missing volume is fat, so usually the best fat replacement is fat. This is removed from a donor site like the tummy with a blunt needle and then re-injected into the cheeks chin or lips as facial filler. Combined with a lift this volume brings back a youthful look. If you think back to high school and college everyone had a full face and a skinny body. Then over the years the face tissues start to disappear and the body gets fatter. It’s unfair but that’s the way many people age. By reversing the process, filling what has been deflated, the plastic surgeon restores a youthful look. This also re-creates a more natural look without excessive pulling.
Dr. Andrew Kaczynski is a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon serving Roseville, Folsom, Granite Bay, Sacramento and San Francisco.
Facelift Before & After Pictures
