Facelift surgery

A facelift, technically known as a rhytidectomy (from Ancient Greek ῥυτίς (rhytis) 'wrinkle' + ἐκτομή (ektome) 'excision', surgical removal of wrinkles), is a type of cosmetic surgery procedure used to give a more youthful facial appearance. There are multiple surgical techniques and exercise routines. Surgery usually involves the removal of excess facial skin, with or without the tightening of underlying tissues, and the redraping of the skin on the patient's face and neck. Exercise routines tone underlying facial muscles without surgery. Surgical facelifts are effectively combined with eyelid surgery (blepharoplasty) and other facial procedures and are typically performed under general anesthesia or deep twilight sleep. According to the most recent 2011 statistics from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, facelifts were the sixth most popular aesthetic surgery performed after liposuction, breast augmentation, abdominoplasty (tummy tuck), blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery) and breast lift. In the first 70 years of the 20th century facelifts were performed by pulling on the skin on the face and cutting the loose parts off. The first facelift was reportedly performed by Eugen Holländer in 1901 in Berlin. An elderly Polish female aristocrat asked him to: 'lift her cheeks and corners of the mouth'. After much debate he finally proceeded to excise an elliptical piece of skin around the ears. The first textbook about facial cosmetic surgery (1907) was written by Charles Miller (Chicago) entitled The Correction of Featural Imperfections. In the First World War (1914–1918) the Dutch surgeon Johannes Esser made one of the most famous discoveries in the field of plastic surgery to date, namely the 'skin graft inlay technique,' the technique was soon used on both English and German sides in the war. At the same time the British plastic surgeon Harold Delfs Gillies used the Esser-graft to school all those who flocked towards him who wanted to study under him. That’s how he earned the name 'Father of 20th Century Plastic Surgery'. In 1919 Dr. Passot was known to publish one of the first papers on face-lifting, this consisted mainly on the elevating and redraping of the facial skin. After this many others began to write papers on face-lifting in the 1920s. From then the esthetic surgery was being performed on a large scale, from the basis of the reconstructive surgery. The first female plastic surgeon, Suzanne Noël, played a large role in its development and she wrote one of the first books about esthetic surgery named Chirurgie Esthetique, son rôle social. In 1968 Tord Skoog introduced the concept of subfacial dissection, therefore providing suspension of the stronger deeper layer rather than relying on skin tension to achieve his facelift (he publishes his technique in 1974, with subfacial dissection of the platysma without detaching the skin in a posterior direction). In 1976 Mitz and Peyronie described the anatomical Superficial Musculoaponeurotic System, or SMAS, a term coined by Paul Tessier, Mitz and Peyronie’s tutor in craniofacial surgery, after he had become familiar with Skoog’s technique. After Skoog died of a heart attack, the superficial muscular aponeurotic system (SMAS) concept rapidly emerged to become the standard face-lifting technique, which was the first innovative change in facelift surgery in over 50 years. Tessier, who had his background in the craniofacial surgery, made the step to a subperiosteal dissection via a coronal incision. In 1979, Tessier demonstrated that the subperiosteal undermining of the superior and lateral orbital rims allowed the elevation of the soft tissue and eyebrows with better results than the classic face-lifting. The objective was to elevate the soft tissue over the underlying skeleton to re-establish the patient's youthful appearance. At the start of this period in the history of the facelift there was a change in conceptual thinking, surgeons started to care more about minimizing scars, restoring the subcutaneous volume that was lost during the ageing process and they started making use of a cranial direction of the 'lift' instead of posterior.