Tulsa, OK | Face Lift | Tulsa Surgical Arts

Angelo Cuzalina: When you're talking about the aging face, right in that 50s, 60s range is the most common person who comes in for a quote, "Facelift." Everything's about making you refreshed look a lot better, but also look natural and normal so people see you and you look great, but it doesn't look like you've had surgery typically. For the face assessing the entire face, especially for the aging patient that maybe say in their 60s when you really have to look at the entire face proportionately, and then also find out what bothers them. So I usually start from top to bottom looking at everything. First, assess the proportions in thirds and the front part of the face and from widths. But then you have to look at the skin. Does the skin need laser resurfacing or chemical peels to affect the etching? That often happens with people who have smoked in the past, but also sun damage.

Angelo Cuzalina: Next is brow position. The eyebrows, particularly on women, can look really, really good if the outer third of the browse accentuated. So you have to assess well is it the eyebrow that's falling or the upper eyelids or both. Next, the lower eyelids. The most common thing with the lower eyelids is little puffy bags, but also hollowing here. So eyelids usually involve a combination of taking out the full parts and filling up the hollow parts. And actually the entire face is similar to that in certain ways. As we age, we hollow out in certain areas, but the most common thing that people complain of at that age is neck. They come in and they say my jowls sag and my neck sags. It's really a facelift, but it should be called a lower face and neck lift because what a facelift is lifting is the jowls and the neck. And the incisions for this there's typically a small one here and the rest are around the ears, just inside the ear in the crease and then into the hair.

Angelo Cuzalina: But it lifts the deeper structures. So the muscles are treated under here along with deep fat and the muscular system underneath the skin is lifted. The skin merely comes along for the ride. So unlike the facelifts from 20 and 30 years ago, where just the skin was tightened and it gave the wind swept look, the new facelift lifts the deeper structures. We correct the 3D problems as far as volume, and then the skin just simply comes along with no major tension on it at all. If there are skin problems then in addition to the jowl and neck sagging, we treat the skin itself separately by means of topical creams as well as laser resurfacing and other means of treating this.

Angelo Cuzalina: Finally, there's the nose. It's right in the middle of your face, and so that's the last thing to assess. And it's in many ways the thing that people look at first when they see someone, that and the eyes. The nose on someone who's in their 50s and 60s tends to tip down just a little bit. And compared to the picture of them when they were younger, their nose was turned maybe up just a little bit or not at all, but it certainly didn't turn down. And the turning down is a classic sign of aging. So even with just a very small procedure to the nose, it's often very rejuvenating, very subtle, but makes a very nice difference.