What Happens at a Facelift Consultation?

Let's talk a little bit about consultation for aging face and how it goes. Patients come in here asking for procedures because their sister, their cousin, their friend had a certain procedure. They've been doing months and years of research on Google thinking that they need a certain procedure. They may have had ChatGPT or Grok or Claude recommend a certain procedure.

But when you see a board certified facial plastic surgeon, a board certified plastic surgeon, somebody who is an expert on the face and neck, after we examine you, we tell you what you need. So for example, there are situations where a patient comes in here and they're concerned about the laxity, the crepiness, the skin down here. And ChatGPT or their research or their best friend may have told them, you just need to do this. It's just a neck lift.

You don't need anything else. But the reality is it doesn't work that way. There is no procedure that just pulls the neck skin in this direction. The reason this bunches up, the reason you get the crepiness is that everything is descended down and inwards.

To properly treat it, we have to put things back where it is. So for me to improve the crepiness here, which I can do a beautiful job with, I have to take the platysma with the skin attached, not delaminated, in a preservation deep plane method. Take this muscle and bring it back up. What that does, it improves the skin all the way down to basically your chest.

Does an incredible job. But as it comes up, the rest of the face and the cheeks and everything else needs to come up with it. That's a deep plane face and neck lift. Now, sometimes there's so much laxity here that as it comes up, it bunches here.

So then you have to actually reset the brow with it. So you may need a brow reset. Even though you're upset about this, I may have to tell you, you need this as well because I got to take everything back in the same direction. Sometimes patients come in here for a very isolated upper eyelid skin excess and they think that's all I need.

But I have to look at their eyebrows and say, where is the brow? Because as the brow drops down, it crowds the eyelid. If I just remove the eyelid skin without readjusting the brow position, they're not going to look good. They may even look worse.

Not everybody. A lot of people can just do an upper eyelid blepharoplasty, but some people need the brow reset as well. So when you come in for a consult, come in with an open mind. I love the fact that you've done research.

I love people that are educated. They have researched. They know this stuff. When you come in, I will examine you and we'll have this discussion.

Keep an open mind. We may have to see each other a few times until you trust the process, trust the recommendation. But that's what the consultation is for.