The First Advanced MACS-Lift Workshop

A week ago I attended this workshop in Ghent Belgium. It was given by two plastic surgeons, Patrick L. Tonnard and Alexis M. Verpale who developed the MACS-Lift and have published two books about it. The workshop was divided into two parts. The first was a didactic session discussing the fine points of the procedure. The second was a live surgical demonstration showing details of the extended MACS-Lift procedure, as well as ancillary procedures (blepharoplasty, temporal brow lift and fat injections) that can be performed to give additional improvement.

Face-lifts vs. Fillers

Catherine Deneuve put it succinctly: "At a certain age you have to choose between your face and your ass." If you are plump, your face may have some of the roundness associated with youth. If you are of normal weight or thin, your face will very likely be hollow. However, it doesn't have to be like that, as this photo of Dara Torres shows. If you look at her hands, they look her age of 41.
If you look at her face, it has the fullness of youth.

Lifestyle lift: Medical Breakthrough or Marketing Breakthrough?

Today we had in a patient who had previously looked into a "Lifestyle lift". This is not the first patient that we have seen who has gone this route. If you look at the Lifestyle lift web site the terms "revolutionary and groundbreaking" are used. Through careful wording the terms are used to apply to the procedure, but the implication is that these terms apply to the Lifestyle lift, which is somehow unique.

Filler vs. Facelift

On a web site limited to dermatologists there were photos posted of a woman from Florida who had approximately 15 1.3 cc syringes of Radiesse placed in her face. The photos have not been authorized to show to the public, so you'll have to take my word that the results were dramatic, comparable to those seen with a good MACS Lift or facelift. The patient's neck was not shown on the photos, so it's very possible that the results on the neck were not comparable to those that would result from surgery.

Fraxel re:pair (CO2)

This past weekend I went to a Fraxel re:pair seminar at Reliant Technologies. The re:pair is a CO2 laser that uses Reliant's patented scanning technology to lay down a precise pattern of laser  pulses on the skin. There us no doubt, in my view, that Fraxel has the most sophisticated technology in the field. The scanner is fast and precise, and the relatively high power of the laser allows deeper penetration than competing lasers.

The male facelift

Men are becoming a larger percentage of cosmetic surgery patients. For many men looking young is viewed as a career asset. They are perceived as being more energetic and perhaps more employable. We have male patients who regularly get Botox  so they won't look so mean. Recently we had a man who had a MACS-lift because he recently had a child. He is in his 50s and didn't want people in the future asking about his grandchild when he was with her.

Facelift: The MACS-Lift, A Significant Improvement

Many of the potential problems with the traditional facelift are handled well by the MACS-Lift MACS-Lift Information .

Facelift Surgery: Part One

A facelift is a mis-named procedure. It should be called a cheek-neck lift, because that is where the primary benefits are seen. Although it is now generally agreed the many of the changes that are treated by facelift surgery are the result of the loss of deeper tissue, it is still not practical or financially sensible to correct all the changes with filler replacement of the missing tissue.