Midface lift in our Caribbean plastic surgery clinic at Trinidad Institute of Plastic Surgery addresses the aesthetically most important region in the face during facial rejuvenation, which Ramirez termed the “central oval” encompassing an elliptic area around the eyes, cheeks, forehead, lips and chin. It is what we see when we look directly from in front at a person. Facial aging in this region comprises loss of skeletal substance, loss of volume of the soft tissues, downward migration of the of the soft tissues secondary to relaxation of their anchorings and intrinsic aging of the skin.
Classic face lifting procedures (a misnomer, as these procedures had most effect on the neck and lower third of the face overlying the lower jaw) as opposed to a midface lift always had a hard time addressing these changes, even in their more modern and more extensive adaptations.
From the incision in front around the ear one can not pull the tissues of the face upward, the pull is mostly backward. This obviously does not counteract the downward migration of the important midface tissues, which have to be moved upward and not backward as it would happen during a midface lift.
The harder one pulls backward in fact during a classic facelift, the more unfavorable the result in the midface actually becomes, until one arrives at the infamous “windswept face” a comic book rendering of a face meeting the strong gusts of a storm head on.
A midface lift represents a more powerful technique to address the changes brought about by aging. It addresses the lower eyelid, cheeks and nasolabial folds as a unit. The direction of the lift in a midface lift is vertically upwards, which repositions the soft tissues over the cheek bones recreating a youthful fullness. At the same time a midface lift helps to soften the junction between the lower eyelids and cheeks and smoothes the nasolabial fold. Additionally, changes in the lower eyelid are addressed as the descended muscle around the eye is tightened and anchored higher in the course of a midface lift procedure. In keeping with the concept of creating structure first and the just redraping the skin over it, removal of skin is minimal, avoiding the frequent stigmata of eyelid procedures such as shrinking of the eyelids and loss of natural eye shape.
At Trinidad Institute of Plastic Surgery we create structure first and foremost. Structure is beauty. Skin just drapes over it.
The tightening of the eyelids alone is most of the time sufficient to reduce bulging of intraorbital fat. The procedure is extremely versatile and can be combined freely with implants to address skeletal volume loss or “volumetric” techniques such as fat redraping or grafting to restore soft tissue volume. Light peeling to address intrinsic skin changes is possible.
Recovery time is shortened compared with extensive classic face lifting techniques while the risk of damage to important motor nerves of the face is markedly reduced. Operating time is roughly half of a deep plane face lift and the time until the patient can resume social life is not much longer than a lower eyelid procedure.
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Trinidad Institute of Plastic Surgery – the superior choice for midface lift in the Caribbean, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Miami, New York, Toronto, London