Los Angeles Cheek Lift doctors

The correct answer to your question is that you should seek out a surgeon who has devoted the time to learning how to treat malar bags, and has the surgical judgment and skill to achieve reliable correction of this problem, regardless of his specialty.  The important point here is that malar bags are not a simple problem to treat.  There can be a number of contributors to the problem of malar bags, and the anatomy of this area is complex. Because the etiology is usually multifactorial, the optimal treatment of malar bags will generally entail a concert of coordinated surgical maneuvers, rather than just using "the same hammer for every nail."

This can include resection of pre- and post-septal fat, release of the arcus marginalis (the attachment of the orbital septum to the bony orbital rim), septal reset (a repair and reinforcement of the orbial septum), fat transposition (movement of fat from one compartment of the eyelid to another), lateral canthopexy or canthoplasty ( techniques to tighten the lower eyelid), orbicularis suspension (tightening of the periocular musculature), fat grafting (placement of fat harvested from other parts of the body into the lower eyelid and cheek to change their contour), skin excision (including direct excision of the malar bags in some severe cases) and endoscopic midface lift. Malar bags are a complicated problem to treat, and often require the surgeon to utilize multiple approaches from his surgical armamentarium in a concerted fashion to achieve optimal results.

The relationship between the terms "cheek lift" and "mid-face lift" might be best characterized as one of genus versus species. Thus any surgical procedure that is intended to rejuvenate the area in and around the cheeks might be termed a "cheek lift". This might include a variety of facelift procedures from subperiosteal to high SMAS to skin only facelifts, as well as all sorts of variety of "short scar" and "mini-facelifts.  However, it would also include placement of malar and submalar implants, as well as all variety of fillers from fat, to hyaluronic acid to artefil and beyond.

A mid-face lift, on the other hand, refers to something very specific. It is a procedure designed to lift the soft tissues of the mid-face, which is defined as the area of the face extending from the lateral canthus (the outside corner of the eye) to the oral commissure (the corner of the mouth). To do this, the soft tissues of this region of the face are thoroughly freed from their attachments to the underlying facial skeleton, elevated to a more youthful position, and then fixated in their new location. To achieve this movement, the ligaments that secure this soft tissue to the bone must be released, and this generally dictates that dissection be performed in a subperiosteal plane.

Access for this kind of dissection is generally obtained via incisions in the lower eyelid or the temporal scalp, sometimes with counter-incisions placed in the gingivobuccal sulcus (the space between the cheek and gums), in order to optimize the release of soft tissues in the midface. In our practice, we prefer access incisions in the temporal scalp instead of the lower eyelids, since we feel this reduces the risk of periocular complications. We always perform the gingivobuccal incisions as well, since we believe this insures the complete release of the soft tissues of the midface, which is the essential step to insure their adequate movement to achieve dramatic facial rejuvenation.

In addition to softening the nasolabial folds and achieving some improvement in the marionette lines and the jowls, a well-executed midface lift can translocate soft tissue to the lid/cheek junction that will camouflage the exposure of the inferior orbital rim (lower rim of the bony eye socket) that is one of the hallmarks of facial aging.  Finally, an effective midface lift will shorten the distance from the ciliary margin (the lower eyelashes) to the orbital rim. This lenghthening of the height of the lower eyelid is another cardinal sign of facial aging that can be significantly improved by a mid-face lift, to a far greater degree than can be achieved by standard "cheek lift" procedures.

In general I recommend you see a Plastic Surgeon or Facial Plastic Surgeon. However, there are a few well-trained surgical dermatologists who would operate to fix this problem.