Mini Face Lift Surgery

The mini facelift works on the lower two thirds of the face. Through a short incision, Dr. Sohrab lifts and tightens the SMAS, which is the firm sheet of tissue sitting under your skin. Cheeks go back where they used to sit. The jawline gets its edge back, and early jowls soften.

Plenty of things stay untouched, though. Loose neck skin and those vertical bands under the chin need a full lift or a separate neck procedure. Sun damage and fine lines are a job for skin treatments. If your face has gone hollow rather than saggy, fat or filler will do more than any lift. Better to know that now than at your first follow-up. For a general overview of the full operation, BAAPS sets out what a facelift involves.

Signs You Might Suit a Mini Lift

Patients tend to be in their late thirties through to their mid fifties, though skin quality counts for more than the number on your passport. Dr. Sohrab usually looks for several of these together:

• Early jowls; your jawline has blurred, but nothing has dropped far yet.
• Flatter cheeks; cheek fat has slid downward and the face reads as tired.
• Deeper smile lines; that fold from nose to mouth has deepened over the past few years.
• A firm neck; no loose skin hanging below the jaw, no visible bands.
• Springy skin; pinch it and it snaps back quickly.
• Not much time off; a week or so away from work, rather than three.
• Non smoker; or ready to quit four weeks either side of surgery.

Mini Face Lift Surgery or Full Facelift Surgery?

Your neck answers this question, usually within a minute of the consultation starting. Loose skin that stops at the jawline? A mini lift handles that. Once the sag carries on down into the neck, only full facelift surgery, often with a neck lift alongside it, will look right. A mini lift on that face just looks odd, tight above and loose below.

There is a real difference in recovery too. The full operation uses longer incisions that run around and behind the ear, brings more swelling, and keeps most people at home for two weeks. Mini lifts heal faster. They also do less, and they fade sooner. Dr. Sohrab talks you through both with a mirror in your hand, pointing at your own face rather than at diagrams. His Mini face lift surgery page goes into the full version properly.

Mini Cheek Lift and Lower Face Options

Not every mini lift does the same job. A mini cheek lift concentrates on the midface, moving cheek fat back up over the cheekbone and softening that hollow under the eye. Patients who book it usually complain about looking tired, not about jowls.

The mini facelift for the lower face goes the other way, working on the jawline and the jowls. That version is the one Dr. Sohrab performs most often. Quite a few faces need a bit of each, so he sets the direction of the lift according to where things have actually dropped, which is rarely straight up.

The Face Tuck Explained: Incisions and Technique

Face tuck, mini face lift surgery, short scar facelift. Different names, more or less the same operation. The incision sits in the natural crease right in front of your ear and sometimes curls a centimetre or two up into the hairline at the temple. Compared with a full face lift scar it is short, and it hardly ever runs behind the ear.

Dr. Sohrab lifts the skin a small distance, then tightens the SMAS underneath with stitches, either folding that layer over itself or trimming a strip out, depending on how much movement the face needs. He trims only the skin that is genuinely spare. Closing without tension is the part that keeps the scar thin and stops anyone looking windswept.