Hi there! This is Dr. Sherman at the Del Mar Cosmetic Medical Center, and on this video we are going to talk a little bit about a very, very important part of facial aging the neck.
Everybody is concerned about the way their neck ages. Let’s start with an early stage of neck aging problem which usually relates to excess fat in the neck. These are the types of patients that we can do liposuction on by using very small little pinpoint incisions. We remove the fat, and the skin is going to contract very nicely and give us a beautiful contour.
As we get older, we not only start to collect even more fat in the midline of the neck but also underneath the platysma muscle. Also, the platysma muscles relax. When we’re young, that muscle is nice and tight, but as we age it starts to separate and starts to sag. These are the types of patients that we need to consider performing a submentoplasty. That’s simply a term that we use for a combination of two things; the liposuction that I just mentioned plus the platysma tightening, and we do that through a small little incision of three quarters of an inch long underneath the chin in a normal crease. We are able to visualize the medical aspects of that muscle and tighten it together after we remove the fat deposits that separate the muscles. This also gives us a great contouring of the neck in appropriate cases.
Now, as we age further we come to the third stage and that is when we get not only fat with muscle laxity, but also a lot of skin laxity here in the neck, including the base of the neck so that when you put your chin down, like so, there’s a lot of wrinkling that occurs, that actually goes onto the upper chest. These are the types of patients that we can really help out tremendously by doing what we call a full neck lift or posterior face lift, and that includes the submentalplasty, the liposuction, and the platysma tightening from this approach, but also an approach where we have to make an incision around the back of the ear and then into the hairline of the back of the neck.
It’s a very cosmetic incision that permits us to elevate the skin and to also suspend that same platysma muscle from its lateral aspect upward, giving us a nice lift to the base of the neck - really cleaning up the base of the neck and giving us a beautiful (what we like to call) “neck/chin angle”, and that procedure will last a significant, long time.
If you are interested in any of these exciting techniques, please look through our website. We have more info about these procedures there. Give us a call at 858-350-8400 or email us directly from our website. We’ll be happy to get you into our office where we can spend some more time evaluating your needs and concerns and recommending some solutions. Thanks!
Click to View Face Lift Before & After Photos
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