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  • Minimally Invasive Early Stage Facelift Gives a Longer Lasting Youthful Appearance
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Sheila Maitlen: I want you to share with the viewers about the Minimally Invasive Facelift.

Dr. Joseph Grzeskiewicz: Okay, well one of the things that I really have been focusing on lately is what's called a Minimally Invasive Facelift or a short scar facelift. There are a variety of different types and techniques. It's not like this is a big novel concept, but I tend to like those for people that are on the younger end of the age spectrum or that don't need or want a whole knockdown drag-out major facial lifting procedure. Maybe their neck is not quite so bad, but it's just along their jaw line, or jowl, or mid-cheek area that they want to spruce up. This also goes very nicely hand-in-hand with the fat transfer procedures that we were talking about before.

One of the things I think that facelifting in the past has neglected is volume changes as a part of facial aging. We would do such aggressive face and neck lifts, and we'd get beautiful tightening of the tissues, but people would still look kind of unnatural; sometimes even bizarre because we'd neglect the volumizing of the face in favor of just tightening, which is all we had in our tool box.

Now I like to incorporate a Minimally Invasive Facelift to just tighten those tissues that are loose with a short scar that maybe goes from about the sideburn area around the front of the ear to maybe just behind the earlobe. It doesn't go all the way back here, nothing under the chin to open up the neck. We can address those tissues right here that we want to adjust along the jaw line and the cheek, and then the rest we can kind of do with volume either using fat transfer or fillers.

Sheila Maitlen: The exciting part about that for me is a person can have that done younger in life instead of having to feel like to justify the whole big shebang waiting another ten years and so they can keep their youthfulness a little bit longer.

Dr. Joseph Grzeskiewicz: Absolutely. To me it's much more anatomically accurate because again we're not relying on a tightening procedure like a face and neck lift to do everything. We're addressing the anatomy that the anatomical changes that have actually happened. We're tightening those tissues that need to be tightened but then we're also replacing volume where volume has really been lost. We're not trying to drag volume from one part of the face and use that volume to then replace areas that have just naturally become deficient.

Sheila Maitlen: What's the healing process? Does it differ from a full facelift, the Minimally Invasive Facelift?

Dr. Joseph Grzeskiewicz: I think the healing process is a little shorter for the Minimally Invasive Facelift procedure. Some of that may be influenced by whether we use fat transfer, too, but most people by ten days or two weeks are what I would say socially comfortable. They could go to a cocktail party or go to a social event and feel like they look normal. Most of the bruising and swelling is gone. We don't have a lot of bruising and swelling with the Minimally Invasive Facelift. If fat transfer is incorporated, one thing I should point out is that fat transfer procedures do get some swelling. This is normal. It's part of the procedure, but again, mostly by a week that's gone. If you are contemplating a fat transfer, be aware that you'll have a little more swelling than you might expect if you didn't have the fat transfer.

Minimally Invasive Early Stage Facelift Gives a Longer Lasting Youthful Appearance

Dr. Joseph Grzeskiewicz explains the idea behind getting a minimally invasive facelift earlier in life. Who is the best candidate and how does it differs from the traditional variety?