Dr. Zewert:  Facial rejuvenation is about making the patient look younger. With time, we develop wrinkles in our face, frown lines, lines of expression. And the goal of facial rejuvenation is not to make the patient look different, but to restore the youthful look in the patient. Facial rejuvenation encompasses the entire face. Starting from the brow to the eyelids, the cheeks, the jaw line, and finally as part of it, the neckline as well, and the neck itself. And often the facelift is combined with a neck lift, because there’s synergy in doing the facelift and neck lift together. The classic facelift incision actually follows the contour of the ear. In general, I do put a substantial portion of the facelift incision inside the ear.

Dr. Zewert:  The ear, and then we move it into here on the inside of the ear, and then it-- and then the incision goes under here, the ear, and in the crease and then comes into the hairline.

Dr. Zewert:  And it’s very difficult to notice the incision on the patients after they’ve had the procedure done. The procedure to rejuvenate the eyebrows or forehead is called a brow lift. Sometimes all we need to do are very small incisions and use an instrument known as an endoscope to place the brow in a more elevated position, repositioning the brows to make them look more natural and youthful will make the patient appear less tired. The brow when it descends with time as we get older, it will crowd the upper eyelid, and actually cause an excess of skin, or a puckering of skin in the upper eyelid. The procedure we can perform to correct this is an upper lid blepharoplasty. Incision for an upper eyelid lift is actually in a crease in the upper eyelid. It’s extremely well concealed, and really looks like a wrinkle or a crease in the long run. A lot of folks complain about bags in their lower lids. And this is caused by basically usually out pouches of fat that have herniated in the lower lid. The incision can be done inside the eyelid, or it can be done right at the lid margin, right where the lash-- right underneath the lashes, less than a millimeter underneath the lashes. It is extremely difficult to detect this incision. It heals extremely well! In general, with any facial rejuvenation procedure, they’re not particularly painful. The patient recovers very quickly. Now there is some bruising that is associated, and usually it takes at least a week for most of the bruising to go away. It may take about one or two weeks for the incision to heal. Typically about seven to ten days before I can tell a patient that they can wear makeup over the incision. Very important with any facial rejuvenation procedure is understanding the entire face, and keeping facial harmony. You don’t want 20-year-old eyelids and a 70-year-old neck. It just doesn’t look right, and anybody can see that. So you want to keep things in balance. And that’s why it’s really important to get a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon from the American Board of Plastic Surgery, who’s trained in all aspects of facial rejuvenation. All of these facial procedures, so that they can choose the ones that are most needed and combine them the most effectively.