Jowls and Loose Neck Skin: You may not want a facelift but it sounds like your best option

I am a big believer in minimally invasive treatments such as Botox, fillers, Intense Pulse light treatment, low energy Plasma Skin Regeneration, etc.  When the indications are correct, great results are obtained and patients are generally very pleased with their outcome.

However, I have to be honest with you:  for jowls and loose neck skin, the only efficacious treatment is a Facelift.  Patients who have indications for a Facelift, typically want  a Facelift result.  This will not be provided by minimally invasive treatments.  There are many reasons for not wanting to have surgery, some for legitimate concerns, others for perceived dangers.  This is very understandable, but it doesn't change the basic fact that a patient ultimately wants a result which is cosmetically acceptable and which appears appropriate for the amount of money spent.  Minimally invasive treatments are not necessarily cheap and will not give a patient the same level of satisfaction when the indications exceed the results possible with that treatment.

A facelift is typical a procedure to tighten both the skin and the underlying fatty tissue and muscle of the face and the neck to restore a youthful appearance to the face.  One aspect of facial aging is loss of facial fat and this can be restored with the use of Fillers like Juvederm, which is placed in discreet areas to improve certain lines and wrinkles. 

A volumizer like Sculptra can also be used perhaps more effectively to restore volume that is lost with aging.  It is used over a larger area than the fillers and can in some cases give the appearance of having had a facelift because the skin is filled out rather than pulled tight.  It may be more appropriate for those patients whose primary problem is loss of facial fat rather than laxity.  Everyone has a combination of problems but sometimes one problem is prevalent to a greater degree.

Some patients are candidates for Thermage which can be used to tighten the skin and which can be used in conjunction with both the fillers and the volumizers.  Thermage does rely on the ability of the skin to produce collagen and this creates tightening.  You do have to wait about 4 months or so to see the results and the effect will vary from person to person.

In some cases a short scar facelift is ideal because it gives the results of a traditional facelift with a shorted scar and a shorter recovery and it can be performed in some cases under local anesthesia or very light sedation so the recovery time is shorter.