I am a 62-year old woman. Can you help clarify the difference between a traditional facelift and a mini facelift? I want to have a facelift to help lift and smooth the sagging skin on my face.
A traditional facelift incorporated an incision that extended into the scalp hair and lifted the lateral brow. A mini facelift or lower facelift addresses jowl formation, lower facial skin laxity, neck skin laxity, neck muscle bands, and fullness of the neck caused by excess fatty tissue. Sometimes the skin also demonstrates sun-damage and changes in elasticity and collagen, thus rendering the skin looser and with more wrinkles. If this is the case, then I sometimes recommend a fractionated laser resurfacing to address the skin at the same time as a facelift. A facelift can reposition tissues (such as the jowls), but a laser resurfacing is a better option at addressing the elasticity issues of the skin. These procedures can be performed at the same time.