Step 3: Creating The Pocket

• Step 1: Facelift Surgery Goals
• Step 2: Making the Incision
• Step 3: Creating a Pocket
• Step 4: Understanding the Layers
• Step 5: Trimming and Tightening
• Step 6: Improving Jaw Definition
• Step 7: Firming the Neck
• Step 8: Removing Extra Skin
• Step 9: Placing Fine Sutures
• Step 10: The Final Result

After making the incision, our board-certified plastic surgeons create a pocket by releasing the skin from underlying tissues. They also perform this technique on our Denver facelift patients near the nasolabial folds, jowls, marionette lines, as well as into the neck. By exposing the underlying tissues, the surgeons can tighten them for an enhanced lift. Detaching the skin allows the surgeons to lift it as a separate layer near the end of the procedure.

Mini-Facelift vs. Traditional Facelift

When facelift patients need a more comprehensive procedure, our surgeons use an additional incision beneath the chin. That enables them to connect the pocket from one side of the face to the other. They typically detach the skin over the jowls as well. This additional separation helps enlarge the pocket, increasing the surgery’s invasiveness. That can increase swelling, recovery, and risks of surgery. Surgeons performing a mini-facelift create a pocket just large enough to allow for optimal tightening of the underlying tissues and excess skin removal. The mini-facelift technique intentionally leaves the skin attached to the deeper tissues of the jowls and central neck for reasons discussed with later illustrations.

Step 4: Understanding the Layers