Any Hope for a Ropy Looking Neck?

Without photos, it's difficult to determine the treatment to address your concern. Also, it really depends on the amount of #sagging you are experiencing. It's best to begin by consulting with a surgeon in-person. The presence of banding down the front of the #neck, and, amount of excess skin and condition of your skin are among some factors which determine what treatments will best rejuvenate your neck . During your initial examination, your chin will be evaluated along with the neck and jawline. A weak #chin implies a lack of chin support for the skin along the neck line. In younger individuals a chin implant alone is usually all that is needed to improve the appearance of the neck. Subsequently, it will also improve the overall #balance of the face and can create the illusion of a smaller nose. As a stand-alone procedure, chin augmentation can be performed in the office under local #anesthesia. For individuals with signs of #aging in the neck, a chin implant added to one of the recommended procedures above, will provide optimal results.
Your board certified plastic surgeon should evaluate both your anatomical features and aesthetic goals to suggest which procedure best suits your needs. In some cases there may be more than one option to choose from. If you are not a candidate at the time of your #consultation, your board surgeon can recommend #non-surgical alternatives to address your concern. 

Those bands are the anterior border of the platysma muscle, a sheetlike muscle that runs across the neck and jawline.  With age, they sag and pull away from the deeper attachments in the neck, and the overlying skin does something similar.  There is only one solution, which is surgery.  Botox is described and performed, but rarely is worth the money, and the results are not always impressive since the skin remains an uncorrected component.

I also agree with the other surgeons that you require a straightforward facelift, which includes an incision and correction of the midline issues with excess muscle resection and suture reapproximation (anterior plication), and then posterior repositioning as well.  Anything less will leave you with incomplete correction.  Whether or not the surgeon proposes even more, like a muscle relaxing cut in midline, or complete platsymal transection, or neither, is just surgeon preference.

The vertical bands of the platysma muscle need to be tightened together with a neck/facelfit. For those patients who are adamant not to undergo surgery, Botox or Dysport can help flatten them slightly but this is temporary and the treatment ongoing, and there are risks that you would need to discuss with your doctor such as weakness of the neck and even swallowing if very rare cases.

These should be addressed with a full face lift where the band are excised and the remaining muscle forms a sling. If you just try to do a minilift of some name, they WILL recur.

It sound slike you have loose skin and platysma banding but I can not e sure unless I examine you. If this is the case, then a neck lift or facelift with neck lift can give you the results you desire.

Those "ropes" are your platysma muscles, which attach to the undersurface of the skin, very superficially.  They can be treated with Botox, which should work for 3-4 months, so it's a temporary solution.  A permanent solution would be a platysmaplasty, which uses a small incision in the upper neck (beneath the chin), then plicates (sews together) the muscle edges, so they can't create that chasm between them anymore.  This is an outpatient procedure.

Botox can relax the muscle that causes the bands.  Surgical correction (for more severe bands) may involve incision of the bands.  Suturing the muscle in the mid-line and re-susupension of the muscle.

Shortening of the anterior platysmal bands causes the ropes you are referring to. This is addressed through a lower face/neck lift where muscles are tightened along the front part of the jaw line between the chin and the Adam’s apple. The bands are then released down low over the thyroid area so that they lengthen, expand, and the cords go away. Neck fat will be addressed at the same time in addition to tightening any excess skin in the lower neck.

What you are referring too is called Platysmal banding. There is a muscle in the center of the neck that as we get older, in some of us, the center part will start to disintegrate. The solution for this problem is to surgically re-attach this 2 muscles into one in the center. This also should be performed with a Facelift for better results. Look for advise with your local Facial Plastic Surgeon.

These are platysma bands or neck cords, that are a facia/muscle. The options for treatment are from Botox injections to operating upon by cutting them. See 3 boarded plastic surgeons in your area to evaluate.

From MIAMI Dr. B