Plastic Surgeon Adrian Richards, one of the UK’s top leading facial surgeons at Aurora Clinics gives valuable information on the Face Lift surgery, especially mini facelift versus the full facelift procedure, the difference between these procedures, and who are they best suitable for. For more information please get in touch with one of our dedicated patient advisors on 01844 214362.

Face Lift Surgery – Mini Versus Full

Hello. I’m Adrian Richards. I’m a plastic surgeon, and I’m going to talk a little bit today about the different types of face lift, because there’s an awful lot of different types of face lifts and often it’s very confusing for anyone who doesn’t have any specific knowledge about face lifts to really understand the different variations.

So the way I think about face lifts is they’re either divided into short scar or full face lifts. So a short scar face lift is often known as a MACS face lift, which the acronym stands for minimal access, which basically means short scar, cranial suspension, which essentially means that the tissues of the skin, underneath the skin of the face are held up with permanent stitches to the fascia in the temporal area, which is very firm. That’s the cranial suspension area.

So a face lift can either be a short scar, which typically involves a scar in the hairline here, hidden and in front of the ear. So in any face or neck lift, there will be an incision in front of the ear. Where a short scar face lift differs from a full face lift is a full face lift involves a further scar going up in the fold behind the ear and back into the hair.

Who would benefit from a MACS face lift, short scar face lift? Typically, these patients are younger, normally in their 40s, early 50s, who have some facial aging, some facial descent, but their neck is not significantly loose. So that’s a short scar, MACS face lift incision just in the temporal in front of the ear, but no incision behind the ear.

A full face lift is used for people who are slightly older, say from 55 or 50 upwards who have some degree of neck laxity. The reason for that is that what we need to do is add a vector backwards in this area to pull the neck backwards and to tighten the neck tissue. Now, often in patients who have a significant amount of laxity in the neck, we’ll also add an incision under the chin to tighten up the skin in that direction, and often repair the muscle in the neck, which is called the platysma muscle, which separates slightly.

We’re going to talk much more about face lifts in further videos, but the main thing to think about is in the younger patient who has just got some facial descent, the cheeks are slightly lower than they were, so the prominence of cheeks is more down here than up here, and they’re just beginning to lose some definition of the jaw line, a MACS face lift, which essentially does this, is most suitable. That’s for patients who are typically 40s, early 50s. Patients older than that, over 55 will typically benefit from more of a full, more traditional face lift, which is a face and neck lift with a posterior extenditure, which elevates the face but also ties in the chin. And you need to discuss with your surgeon whether they feel a supplemental incision under the chin would be beneficial.

So I hope that clears up some of the issues. I’m going to talk in later videos about a SMAS lift and what exactly is done to the lower tissues, the deeper tissues in the face, some of the risks of surgery, and the other procedures you can have with face lift surgery, such as facial peels, fat grafting, and eyelid surgery. So I hope that’s cleared up some of the issues. If you would like to listen to a podcast of someone who’s had this procedure, please go to our podcast page where I interview some surgeons who talk about this procedure and also some patients. And if we can give you any further information, please contact us, and we will be more than happy to answer any of your queries. So thank you very much for listening.