What is it that distinguishes Dr. Farhad Rafizadeh’s facelift in Morristown New Jersey from other facelifts? Why do patients recover faster and love their overall experience?

Dr. Rafizadeh explains:

To Understand my facelift and why it is so effective and offers such a quick recovery, one needs to understand the causes of facial aging. What happens to the face of an older person? Well, the changes happen so slowly that they are not visible from day to day or month to month. Let us assume that you are in your fifties and are looking at a picture of yourself at age twenty. Assuming that your weight hasn’t changed much, you will see that the skin has lost its recoil and elasticity. You’ve also lost the plumpness in the cheeks, eyelids, and lips. You’ll see that the tissues have migrated from the midface to the lower face and consequently jowls have developed. The migration starts in the areas where the skin is not as tightly attached to the deeper tissues. There are ligaments attaching the skin to the deeper structure in the furrows. These furrows create shadows caused by depressions by the sides of the chin and the mouth. The downward migration makes the face appear more rectangular.

Facelift techniques are all designed to bring the tissues back to their original location. This reestablishes the fullness of the mid-face and creates a more triangular shape. Turning the rectangle into a triangle is the goal of all facelift techniques. These techniques have evolved going into deeper and deeper planes. They eventually go all the way down to the bone, like in a subperiosteal facelift procedure. Throughout my 34 years of private practice in plastic surgery, I have seen all of these techniques evolve. I’ve seen how effective these techniques are, but have also observed their potential complications. The recovery and the swelling are longer when the procedure is more extensive. Surgeons are proud of their ability to dissect the face and visualize the important structures like the facial nerves. I have gone to so many national and international meetings and sat through presentations by experts on how their procedure is better. I have also noticed that there are less complicated procedures, with less dissection, that achieve similar or better results. Having lived through all of these experiences, I have gradually developed my own techniques. These techniques are based on a deep understanding of the facial anatomy and its incredible variation from patient to patient. These variations depend on the patient’s ethnic origin, sex, occupation, diet, and age. Dissection is fascinating in the anatomy lab on a cadaver but should be limited and minimized in a facelift procedure. As I said before, there are fixed and mobile areas in the face. Some of the fixed areas need to be released to allow movement, but in many faces, the mobile areas can be moved without much dissection and release. The main secret is the ability to know what can be done in each case and achieve the best results. One has to avoid strictly following a recipe. Most surgeons are like cooks in that they follow a recipe in a book and they do the same procedure on every patient. For example, there are surgeons who do deep plane facelifts or high SMAS lifts exclusively. To get the best results and the quickest recovery, one needs to understand what works for that individual patient. One has to use the least invasive procedure to accomplish a great result. In certain cases, a more extensive exposure and dissection are required. This has to be recognized in advance and the patient should be made aware of the longer recovery. It would be a travesty to do the same exact procedure for every patient and cause unnecessarily long recovery and unnatural results. This is why we see so many bad facelifts that are even visible from far away. This has given this wonderful procedure a bad name and allowed the explosion of so many less effective gadget-based procedures. Most of these gadget based procedures are done by much less qualified practitioners, with the premise of a faster recovery. Faster recovery and solid results have to go hand in hand. It is useless to do something that gives you no results and have to repeat it multiple times to see a difference.

So in summary, the surgeon has to have the artistic talent in order to set the proper goals. He needs to realize the extent of the procedure needed to accomplish those goals. The plastic surgeon needs to individualize each case so that no unnecessary step is taken during the procedure and only do what is needed. One needs to respect the natural curves and furrows. There are features that are very hard or even impossible to duplicate. These features have to be preserved. Please follow us on Facebook  to see  the latest News.