Facelift or rhytidectomy in Denver, Colorado is a procedure designed to reposition tissues in the face into a more youthful position.  Facial aging affects several structures: the skin, the muscles of the face, the fat volume of the face, and the bone volume of the face.  Once upon a time, it was thought that all you had to do to get a tight face was pull the skin tight.  Times have certainly changed!

In modern facelifting or rhytidectomy, the skilled surgeon analyzes all the aging structures of the face to determine what treatment each layer may need to effectively turn back the hands of time.  For instance, the skin may have been ravaged by sun exposure, smoking, weight loss, or time.  It may not be as elastic as it once was.  The extra skin will need to be removed.  The skin may need to be further tightened and toned using fractional laser resurfacing.

The underlying muscle can get loose especially in the neck (platysma) and this may need to be tightened to remove the old “turkey neck.” There may be excess fat in the neck and jowls that would benefit from liposuction to help shape the lower face and neck.  Finally aging can cause bone loss in the facial skeleton, the results possibly being a small chin, sunken cheeks, or weak jawline.  Facial implants or revolumization with fat or injectible filler would restore the proper volume relationships.

Facelifts or rhytidectomy are surgical procedures which means they leave scars and have some downtime associated with them.  Younger patients may only need a small scar in front of the ear to tighten both skin and muscle.  Older patients or those with poor skin quality may need scars that are both in front of and behind the ear to redrape the excess skin.  These scars are placed in easily camouflaged areas to allow for minimal show.

General anesthesia used to be the only option for patients, but now patients in Denver can get their facelift or rhytidectomy in the doctor’s office using just oral sedation and local anesthetic.  This allows for faster and safer anesthetic recovery. Cost savings are enormous also.

If you are interested in facelift or rhytidectomy in Denver, Colorado please call (303) 708-8234 to schedule your complementary consultation. Or, visit us on the web at http://www.drmanishshah.com for more information.

Tags: Colorado, Denver, facelift, fractional laser resurfacing, M.D., Manish H. Shah, minifacelift, rhytidectomy

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 at 1:29 am and is filed under Facial Plastic Surgery Denver. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.